Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (163 page)

2
. [Anon.],
Four Letters on Interesting Subjects
(Philadelphia, 1776), 21; [Adams],
Boston Gazette
, Jan. 27, 1766, in Adams, ed.,
Works
, 3: 480–82. Thomas Paine, who was likely the author of
Four Letters
, was still contending in his
Rights of Man, Part Second (1792)
, that “the judicial power, is strictly and properly the executive power of every country.” Philip Foner, ed.,
The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine
(New York, 1969), 1: 388 .

3
. William Henry Drayton,
A Letter From Freeman of South-Carolina
(Charleston, 1774), 10 .

4
. Gerhard Casper,“The Judiciary Act of 1789 and Judicial Independence,” Maeva Marcus, ed.,
Origins of the Federal Judiciary: Essays on the Judiciary Act of 1789
(New York, 1992), 284 .

5
. Gordon S. Wood,“The Origins of Judicial Review,”
Suffolk Law Review
, 22 (1988), 1293–307 .

6
. TJ to Edmund Pendleton, 26 Aug. 1776,
Papers of Jefferson
, 1: 505 .

7
. Anaton-Hermann Chroust,
The Rise of the Legal Profession in America
(Norman, OK, 1965), 2: 5–15; George Dargo,
Law in the New Republic: Private Law and the Public Estate
(New York, 1983), 49–59; Lawrence M. Friedman,
A History of American Law
(New York, 1973), 276–81 .

8
. Chroust,
Rise of the Legal Profession in America
, 2: 28 .

9
. TJ to Pendleton, 26 Aug. 1776,
Papers of Jefferson
, 1: 505 .

10
. Marc Raeff,“The Well-Ordered Police State and the Development of Modernity in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe: An Attempt at a Comparative Approach,”
AHR
, 80 (1975), 1221–43; David Lieberman,“Codification, Consolidation, and Parliamentary Statute,” in John Brewer and Eckhart Hellmuth, eds.,
Rethinking Leviathan: The Eighteenth-Century State in Britain and Germany
(London, 1999), 359–90 .

11
. Tj, Autobiography (1821),
Jefferson: Writings
, 32 .

12
. “On the Present States of America,” 10 Oct. 1776, in Peter Force, ed.,
American Archives
, 5th Ser. (Washington, DC, 1837–46), 2: 969 .

13
. Drayton, Speech to General Assembly of South Carolina, Jan. 20, 1778, in Hezekiah Niles, ed.,
Principles and Acts of the Revolution in America
(New York, 1876), 359. For a discussion of the confused state of colonial law and the prevalence of judicial discretion, see Gordon S. Wood,
The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787
(Chapel Hill, 1969), 291–305 .

14
. [Anon.],
Rudiments of Law and Government, Deduced from the Law of Nature
(Charleston, SC, 1783), 35–37 .

15
. St. George Tucker,
Blackstone’s Commentaries: With Notes of Reference to the Constitution and Laws of the Federal Government and of the Commonwealth of Virginia
(Philadelphia, 1803), I, pt. 1, xiii. Of course, this proliferation of statutes in the early Republic was nothing compared to what has taken place in modern times. The
Digest of 1798
, the first codification of laws of the state of Rhode Island, for example, consisted of a single volume of 652 pages. By contrast, the
General Laws of the State in 1998
consisted of thirty volumes with over twenty-one thousand pages of text. Patrick T. Conley, ed.,
Liberty and Justice: A History of Law and Lawyers in Rhode Island, 1636–1998
(East Providence, 1998), 11 .

16
. Mary Sarah Bilder,“The Corporate Origins of Judicial Review,”
Yale Law Journal
, 116 (2006), 502–66 (I owe this reference to Bruce H. Mann); Philip Hamburger,
Law and Judicial Duty
(Cambridge, MA, 2008).

17
. W. M. Geldart,
Elements of English Law
, 6th ed., rev. William Holdsworth and H. G. Hanbury (London, 1959).

18
. David Lieberman,
The Province of Legislation Determined: Legal Theory in Eighteenth-Century Britain
(Cambridge, UK, 1989), 13, 28 .

19
. “The Free Republican,” Boston
Independent Chronicle
, 26 Jan. 1786 .

20
. Moses Mather,
Sermon, Preached in the Audience of the General Assembly . . . on the Day of Their Anniversary Election, May 10, 1781
(New London, 1781), 7–8 .

21
. Charleston
State Gazette of South Carolina
, 8 Sept. 1784 .

22
. Lynn W. Turner,
William Plumer of New Hampshire, 1759–1850
(Chapel Hill, 1962), 34–35 .

23
. Address of Massachusetts Convention (1780), in Oscar and Mary Handlin, eds.,
The Popular Sources of Political Authority: Documents on the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780
(Cambridge, MA, 1966), 437 .

24
. Wilfred J. Ritz,
Rewriting the History of the Judiciary Act of 1789: Exposing Myths, Challenging Premises, and Using New Evidence
, ed. Wythe Hold and L.H. LaRue (Norman, OK, 1990), 36; D. Kurt Graham,“The Lower Federal Courts in the Early Republic: Rhode Island, 1790–1812” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 2002).

25
. This happened in 1792 in Rhode Island in
Champion and Dickason v. Casey
. Two of Silas Casey’s English creditors brought suit in federal circuit court that Rhode Island’s 1791 statute exempting Casey from his debts for three years was a violation of the contract clause in Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution. The decision in favor of the plaintiffs, says the premier historian of Rhode Island’s past, was “the first instance in American history where a federal court struck down a state statute for violating the Constitution of the United States.” Patrick T. Conley,
First in War, Last in Peace: Rhode Island and the Constitution, 1786–1790
(Providence, 1987), 44.

26
. Dwight F. Henderson,
Courts for a New Nation
(Washington, DC, 1971), 30.

27
. Julius Goebel,
Antecedents and Beginnings to 1801: History of the Supreme Court of the United States
(New York, 1971).

28
. Ritz,
Rewriting the History of the Judiciary Act of 1789
, 22–23; Stephen B. Presser,
The Original Misunderstanding: The English, the Americans, and the Dialectic of Federalist Jurisprudence
(Durham, 1991), ch. 6.

29
. William R. Casto,
The Supreme Court in the Early Republic: The Chief Justiceships of John Jay and Oliver Ellsworth
(Columbia, SC, 1995), 55.

30
. Henry J. Friendly,“The Historic Basis of Diversity Jurisdiction,”
Harvard Law Review
, 41 (1928), 498.

31
. Casto,
Supreme Court in the Early Republic
, 66.

32
. Carl E. Prince,
The Federalists and the Origins of the U.S. Civil Service
(New York, 1977), 242–47.

33
. Ralph Lerner,
The Thinking Revolutionary: Principle and Practice in the New Republic
(Ithaca, 1987), 91–136; Casto,
Supreme Court in the Early Republic
, 126–29.

34
. George L. Haskins and Herbert A. Johnson,
Foundations of Power: John Marshall, 1801–1815: The History of the Supreme Court of the United States of America
(New York, 1981), 395.

35
. Casto,
Supreme Court in the Early Republic
, 164; Thomas P. Slaughter,“‘The King of Crimes’: Early American Treason Law, 1787–1860,” in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds.,
Launching the “Extended Republic”: The Federalist Era
(Charlottesville, 1996), 91.

36
. Administrative Duties of the Judges, in Maeva Marcus et al., eds.,
The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789–1800
(New York, 1992), 4: 723–29.

37
. AH,“The Examination,” 23 Feb 1802,
Papers of Hamilton
, 25: 531–32.

38
. Casto,
Supreme Court in the Early Republic
, 74–75.

39
. Casto,
Supreme Court in the Early Republic
, 116, 178–79.

40
. William Paterson Notes on Judicial Bill Debate, 22 June 1789, Marcus et al., eds.,
Documentary History of the Supreme Court
, 4: 410–12, 414–16.

41
. Jay to Rufus King, 22 Dec. 1793, in Marcus et al., eds.,
Documentary History of the Supreme Court
, 2: 434–35; Graham,“The Lower Federal Courts in the Early Republic,” ch. 2.

42
. In its ratifying convention in 1790 Rhode Island had anticipated the problem of individuals suing the state and had recommended that such cases be removed from federal jurisdiction. Patrick T. Conley,
Rhode Island in Rhetoric and Reflection: Public Addresses and Essays
(East Providence, 2002), 92.

43
. Bradley Chapin,
The American Law of Treason: Revolutionary and Early National Origins
(Seattle, 1964); Slaughter, “‘The King of Crimes,’” in Hoffman and Albert, eds.,
Launching the
“
Extended Republic
,” 93–94, 97–108.

44
. In 1800 the Federalist-dominated Congress finally passed a complicated and much contested bankruptcy act, which the Republicans correctly saw as just another Federalist scheme to extend executive patronage and consolidate the Union. In 1801 the Republicans immediately repealed the act. Not until 1841 did the federal government enact another bankruptcy law, and it lasted only a year. Bruce H. Mann,
Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence
(Cambridge, MA, 2002), 214, 215.

45
. Presser,
Original Misunderstanding
, 68–69.

46
. Presser,
Original Misunderstanding
, 90.

47
. Casto,
Supreme Court in the Early Republic
, 150, 156–57; JM, Report on the Alien and Sedition Acts, 7 Jan. 1800,
Madison: Writings
, 640.

48
. Presser,
Original Misunderstanding
, 103.

49
. TJ to Edmund Randolph, 18 Aug. 1799,
Jefferson: Writings
, 1066.

50
. TJ to Randolph, 18 Aug. 1799,
Jefferson: Writings
, 1066–68.

51
. Oliver Wolcott Jr. to Fisher Ames, 29 Dec. 1799, in Haskins and Johnson,
Foundations of Power: Marshall
, 121.

52
. Boston
Columbia Centinel
, 14 Jan. 1801, quoted in Graham,“The Lower Federal Courts in the Early Republic,”
ch. 2
.

53
. Kathryn Turner,“Federalist Policy and the Judiciary Act of 1801,”
WMQ
, 22 (1965), 3–32.

54
. Kathryn Turner,“Midnight Judges,”
University of Pennsylvania Law Review
, 109 (1961), 494–523.

55
. Richard E. Ellis,
The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic
(New York, 1971), 15.

56
. Dumas Malone,
Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801–1805
(Boston, 1970), 458.

57
. Malone,
Jefferson the President: First Term
, 116.

58
. Ellis,
Jeffersonian Crisis
, 20–21.

59
. TJ to JM, 26 Dec. 1800,
Republic of Letters
, 1156; Ellis,
Jeffersonian Crisis
, 33; Haskins and Johnson,
Foundations of Power: Marshall
, 152.

60
. Malone,
Jefferson the President: First Term
, 119.

61
. Samuel Chase to John Marshall, 24 April 1802, in
Papers of Marshall
, 6: 110.

62
. Graham,“The Lower Federal Courts in the Early Republic,”
Ch. 2
.

63
. Ellis,
Jeffersonian Crisis
, 52.

64
. Ellis,
Jeffersonian Crisis
, 49; Friendly,“Historic Basis of Diversity Jurisdiction,”
Harvard Law Review
, 41 (1928), 483–510; Robert L. Jones,“Finishing a Friendly Argument: The Jury and the Historical Origins of Diversity Jurisdiction,”
New York University Law Review
, 82 (2007), 997–1101.

65
. Malone,
Jefferson the President: First Term
, 462.

66
. Ellis,
Jeffersonian Crisis
, 75.

67
. Robert Dawidoff,
The Education of John Randolph
(New York, 1979), 30, 152–54.

68
. Richard E. Ellis,“The Impeachment of Samuel Chase,” in Michael R. Belknap, ed.,
American Political Trials
(Westport, ct, 1981), 70.