Under the Articles of Confederation, the United States operated without a true federal court system. This structural gap made interstate conflicts harder to settle and prevented consistent, nationwide interpretation and enforcement of law.

What “no national judiciary” meant under the Articles

The Articles of Confederation created a unicameral Congress but did not establish a standing set of federal courts to hear cases, interpret laws, or provide uniform legal remedies.

This diagram summarizes the basic structure created under the Judiciary Act of 1789, showing a tiered federal judiciary with the Supreme Court at the top and lower federal courts beneath it. It reinforces the idea that “uniform legal standards” require an institutional pathway for cases to move through a national system rather than remaining fragmented across separate state courts. Source

With no independent national judiciary, most legal disputes were handled by state courts, each applying its own procedures, precedents, and political priorities.

Limited and improvised dispute resolution

Congress could sometimes serve as an ad hoc forum for certain conflicts, but it lacked the institutional features of a court:

• No permanent judges with defined tenure and judicial independence

• No consistent rules of evidence or procedure applied across cases

• No routine enforcement mechanism for decisions comparable to judicial orders

Why interstate disputes were difficult to resolve

Without a national court system, controversies between states were more likely to become prolonged political battles rather than being channelled into a predictable legal process.

Types of disputes that exposed the weakness

Interstate disputes could involve:

• Boundary disagreements and competing land claims

• Conflicts over commerce-related policies that spilled across borders

• Disputes involving citizens of different states, where each state’s courts might favour in-state parties

• Interpretation of national commitments, such as obligations that required consistent application

Even when states wanted resolution, there was no widely trusted, neutral judicial forum to supply finality and uniformity.

This map shows the early regional organization of the federal judiciary into circuits (as implemented after the Constitution), using color to distinguish circuit groupings. It helps explain how a national court system can impose consistent structure across states—making interstate disputes less dependent on ad hoc politics or parochial state-court decision-making. Source

Lack of uniform legal standards

Because state courts were the primary legal institutions:

• Legal outcomes could vary sharply by state, undermining predictability

• States could interpret shared national rules in self-interested ways

• The national government struggled to ensure consistent compliance when states disagreed about meaning or obligations

This was especially damaging for any area requiring stable expectations across state lines, since inconsistency increases conflict and reduces cooperation.

Why enforcement of national rules was weak

A central function of courts is to make law effective by issuing binding judgments and remedies. Under the Articles, there was no routine federal pathway to translate national decisions into enforceable legal outcomes.

Dependence on voluntary state compliance

With no national judiciary to issue binding orders applicable across the country, Congress often depended on:

• States voluntarily enforcing national decisions through their own courts

• Political negotiation rather than legal compulsion

• Informal pressure instead of a recognised system of legal accountability

When a state chose not to cooperate, there was no standing national court to authoritatively declare the controlling rule and bind the parties to a judicial resolution.

Consequences for legitimacy and stability

The absence of a national judiciary contributed to:

• Lower trust that disputes would be resolved fairly

• More frequent stalemates, because there was no accepted final legal arbiter

• A weaker sense that the United States functioned under one coherent legal order rather than a collection of separate legal regimes

Connection to constitutional redesign

The inability to resolve interstate disputes and enforce uniform legal standards highlighted a broader institutional problem: a national government needs independent adjudication to translate shared rules into consistent practice. A judiciary can:

• Provide neutral interpretation when political bodies disagree

• Create uniformity across jurisdictions

• Offer binding dispute resolution that reduces retaliation and escalation between states

The experience under the Articles helped persuade many leaders that a workable union required a true national court system capable of supporting national governance through consistent, enforceable law.