“Mortals With Tremendous Responsibilities” is Judge Harvey Bartle III’s comprehensive and lively history of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Bartle, who has served for over 20 years on the court, including over five years as its chief judge, observes that from the federal courthouse at Sixth and Market one can see both Independence Hall, where the Constitution and laws giving rise to the court were adopted, and Christ Church cemetery, where Francis Hopkinson, the court’s first judge appointed in 1789, is interred.
This panorama provides a fitting backdrop for a book that describes in highly readable prose the role of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in the development of American jurisprudence and the story of 93 men and women who, to date, have served on its bench. While, of course, the details of each judge’s history are unique, the book demonstrates their shared fidelity to the credo embodied in a quotation from a former judge of the court, C. William Kraft Jr., which inspired the book’s title: “You are a mortal charged with tremendous responsibilities.”
