In 1793, war between France and Great Britain plunged the United States – and the federal courts – into crisis. As the French Revolution reverberated around the Atlantic, the impetuous French foreign minister, Edmond-Charles Genet, launched privateering attacks against British commerce from the United States. The Washington administration tried to prevent Americans from dragging the nation into war, but partisan rivalry and a lack of federal law enforcement power stymied its efforts. Desperate to demonstrate the nation’s sovereign bona fides in the face of British complaints, the administration turned to the courts for help. It asked federal judges to resolve difficult and highly consequential legal disputes that the political branches were unable or unwilling to address. But the judges were not the acquiescent handmaidens in foreign affairs that modern commentators imagine. They balked at violating longstanding principles of international law, and they were wary of compromising the judiciary’s own institutional integrity by intervening in the affairs of state. In the midst of an international conflict of unprecedented scope, the founders’ confidence that the federal courts would ensure the nation’s peace and security seemed to have been mistaken.