The Handy Supreme Court Answer Book. David L Hudson
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of the controversial issues arising with the early Marshall Court concerned the confiscation of property from those loyal to the British government—individuals often called Loyalists. At issue in Fairfax’s Devise v. Hunter’s Lessee was the legality of the state of Virginia’s confiscation of the estate of the late Lord Thomas Fairfax, including a stretch of land called the Northern Neck of Virginia.
Lord Fairfax had instructed that, upon his death, the property would be bequeathed to his nephew, the Reverend Denny Martin. However, state officials confiscated the land and sold the land to investor David Hunter. The Virginia courts determined that the property belonged to Hunter, reasoning that its state laws dealing with the confiscation of property were constitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Virginia court’s decision, with Justice Joseph Story reasoning that the land should go to Fairfax’s heirs. Story also noted that under the unpopular Jay Treaty with the British, the confiscation of Loyalist land was illegal.
On remand, the Virginia Supreme Court thumbed its nose at the U.S. Supreme Court, questioning the authority of the Court under Section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which gave the Court the jurisdiction to hear appeals from state courts. The Virginia Supreme Court jurists, such as the well-known Spencer Roane, criticized the Court’s opinion. Roane believed that the federal government was encroaching upon the sovereign authority of the state of Virginia.
The Virginia Supreme Court essentially ignored the U.S. Supreme’s Court commands, turning a title dispute over land into a major constitutional battle between a state supreme court and the U.S. Supreme Court. The case returned to the U.S. Supreme Court under the name Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, as the living heir of Lord Fairfax was Denny Martin’s younger brother, Thomas Bryan Martin, who was also a nephew of Lord Fairfax. In this decision, Justice Story rebuked the Virginia Supreme Court and affirmed the constitutionality of Section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789.
CourtSpeak: Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee Property Confiscation Case (1816)
Justice Joseph Story (majority): “The constitution unavoidably deals in general language. It did not suit the purposes of the people, in framing this great charter of our liberties, to provide for minute specifications of its powers, or to declare the means by which those powers should be carried into execution. It was foreseen that this would be a perilous and difficult, if not an impracticable, task. The instrument was not intended to provide merely for the exigencies of a few years, but was to endure through a long lapse of ages, the events of which were locked up in the inscrutable purposes of Providence. It could not be foreseen what new changes and modifications of power might be indispensable to effectuate the general objects of the charter; and restrictions and specifications, which, at the present, might seem salutary, might, in the end, prove the overthrow of the system itself. Hence its powers are expressed in general terms, leaving to the legislature, from time to time, to adopt its own means to effectuate legitimate objects, and to mould and model the exercise of its powers, as its own wisdom, and the public interests, should require.”
What exactly did the Virginia Supreme Court say about what it perceived to be the U.S. Supreme Court’s lack of jurisdiction?
The Virginia Supreme Court wrote: “The court is unanimously of opinion that the appellate power of the supreme court of the United States does not extend to this court under a sound construction of the constitution of the United States; that so much of the 25th section of the act of congress, to establish the judicial courts of the United States, as extends the appellate jurisdiction of the supreme court to this court, is not in pursuance of the constitution of the United States. That the writ of error in this cause was improvidently allowed under the authority of that act; that the proceedings thereon in the supreme court were coram non judice [not in the presence of a judge] in relation to this court, and that obedience to its mandate be declined by the court.”
How did Justice Story respond to this flagrant disregard to U.S. Supreme Court authority?
Story responded by writing an opinion that clearly established the power of the U.S. Supreme Court to review state supreme court decisions. He upheld the constitutionality of Section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, writing that “the appellate power of the United States must … extend to state tribunals.” Jean Edward Smith, in his biography of Chief Justice Marshall, entitled John Marshall: Definer of a Nation, writes: “Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee provided the rationale for the supremacy of the Union.”
CourtSpeak: Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee (1816), Regarding the Supremacy of Federal Law
Justice Joseph Story: “When, therefore, the states are stripped of some of the highest attributes of sovereignty, and the same are given to the United States; when the legislatures of the states are, in some respects, under the control of congress, and in every case are, under the constitution, bound by the paramount authority of the United States; it is certainly difficult to support the argument that the appellate power over the decisions of state courts is contrary to the genius of our institutions. The courts of the United States can, without question, revise the proceedings of the executive and legislative authorities of the states, and if they are found to be contrary to the constitution, may declare them to be of no legal validity. Surely the exercise of the same right over judicial tribunals is not a higher or more dangerous act of sovereign power.
“Nor can such a right be deemed to impair the independence of state judges. It is assuming the very ground in controversy to assert that they possess an absolute independence of the United States. In respect to the powers granted to the United States, they are not independent; they are expressly bound to obedience by the letter of the constitution; and if they should unintentionally transcend their authority, or misconstrue the constitution, there is no more reason for giving their judgments an absolute and irresistible force, than for giving it to the acts of the other co-ordinate departments of state sovereignty.”
Why did Chief Justice Marshall not participate in Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee?
Marshall did not participate because his brother James actually owned a portion of the land in question. James Marshall had purchased land directly from Denny Martin in the 1790s. Fearing a conflict of interest, Chief Justice Marshall recused himself.
In what famous decision did Marshall broadly define Congress’s interstate commerce powers?
The Marshall Court broadly defined commerce in its 1824 decision in Gibbons v. Ogden in a battle of steamboat entrepreneurs. The state of New York granted an exclusive license to Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat, to operate steamboats in the New York Harbor and the Hudson River. Livingston and Fulton then licensed Aaron Ogden to operate steamboats from New York City to Elizabethtown, New Jersey.
Steamboats, similar to Robert Fulton’s Clermont, shown here in the New York harbor, were the focus of the Gibbons v. Ogden interstate commerce case in 1824. Getty Images.
Ogden’s former business partner, Thomas Gibbons, wanted to break up this monopoly. He had acquired a federal permit to operate steamboats between New York and New Jersey. Gibbons contended that because he had a federal permit, he did not need to obtain permission from the state of New York. Ogden sued Gibbons, arguing that Gibbons’s activities were infringing on Ogden’s exclusive monopoly from the state of New York. Ogden sought an injunction, ordering Gibbons to cease infringing on his exclusive privilege.
Gibbons, backed by the wealthy Cornelius Vanderbilt, fought back in court by hiring perhaps the best lawyer in America—Daniel Webster. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Ogden’s exclusive monopoly was invalid because it infringed on Congress’s Commerce Clause powers. Marshall broadly defined the powers of Congress’s commerce powers, writing: “Commerce, undoubtedly, is traffic, but it is something more: it is intercourse. It describes the commercial intercourse between nations, and parts of nations, in all its branches, and is regulated