Albertson v. Robeson

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Lessee of Albertson v. Robeson, 1 U.S. 9 (1764) is a decision of a Pennsylvania Provincial Court, issued when Pennsylvania was still an English colony. It is among the first decisions that appear in the first volume of United States Reports.

Pennsylvania U.S. state in the United States

Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the Northeastern, Great Lakes, and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle. The Commonwealth is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, and New Jersey to the east.

<i>United States Reports</i> United States Supreme Court decisions

The United States Reports are the official record of the Supreme Court of the United States. They include rulings, orders, case tables, in alphabetical order both by the name of the petitioner and by the name of the respondent, and other proceedings. United States Reports, once printed and bound, are the final version of court opinions and cannot be changed. Opinions of the court in each case are prepended with a headnote prepared by the Reporter of Decisions, and any concurring or dissenting opinions are published sequentially. The Court's Publication Office oversees the binding and publication of the volumes of United States Reports, although the actual printing, binding, and publication are performed by private firms under contract with the United States Government Publishing Office.

Contents

Colonial and Early State Court Cases in the United States Reports

None of the decisions appearing in the first volume and most of the second volume of the United States Reports are actually decisions of the United States Supreme Court. Instead, they are decisions from various Pennsylvania courts, dating from the colonial period and the first decade after Independence. Alexander Dallas, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania lawyer and journalist, had been in the business of reporting these cases for newspapers and periodicals. He subsequently began compiling his case reports in a bound volume, which he called “Reports of cases ruled and adjudged in the courts of Pennsylvania, before and since the Revolution”. [1] This would come to be known as the first volume of "Dallas Reports."

Alexander J. Dallas (statesman) 6th United States Secretary of the Treasury

Alexander James Dallas was an American statesman who served as the U.S. Treasury Secretary under President James Madison.

When the United States Supreme Court, along with the rest of the new Federal Government, moved in 1791 to the nation's temporary capital in Philadelphia, Dallas was appointed the Supreme Court's first unofficial and unpaid Supreme Court Reporter. (Court reporters in that age received no salary, but were expected to profit from the publication and sale of their compiled decisions.) Dallas continued to collect and publish Pennsylvania decisions in a second volume of his Reports, and when the Supreme Court began hearing cases, he added those cases to his reports, starting towards the end of the second volume, “2 Dallas Reports”. Dallas would go on to publish a total of 4 volumes of decisions during his tenure as Reporter.

Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States

The Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States is the official charged with editing and publishing the opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States, both when announced and when they are published in permanent bound volumes of the United States Reports. The Reporter of Decisions is responsible for only the contents of the United States Reports issued by the Government Printing Office, first in preliminary prints and later in the final bound volumes. The Reporter is not responsible for the editorial content of unofficial reports of the Court's decisions, such as the privately published Supreme Court Reporter or Lawyers' Edition.

In 1874, the U.S. government created the United States Reports, and numbered the volumes previously published privately as part of that series, starting from the first volume of Dallas Reports. The four volumes Dallas published were retitled volumes 1 - 4 of United States Reports. [2] As a result, decisions appearing in these early reports have dual citation forms; one for the volume number of the United States Reports, and one for the set of reports named for the reporter (called nominative reports). For example, the complete citation to Lessee of Albertson v. Robeson is 1 U.S. 9 (1 Dallas 9) (1764).

Decision

As with many of Dallas's early reports, his report of this case is incomplete, and invites as many questions as it answers. For instance, Dallas's report does not reveal which court issued this decision. This appears to be the decision of a trial court, rather than an appellate court, such as the Pennsylvania Provincial Supreme Court. The decision of the court holding that proposed testimony constitutes hearsay, and the discussion of the court's charge to a jury, are consistent with the evidentiary and jury decisions that a trial court would typically make. An appellate court might review a trial court's decision, but it typically does not make evidentiary decisions in the first place, nor would it give a charge (or instruction) to a jury.

Hearsay evidence is "an out-of-court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted therein." In certain courts, hearsay evidence is inadmissible unless an exception to the Hearsay Rule applies.

Jury sworn body of people convened to render a verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment

A jury is a sworn body of people convened to render an impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Juries developed in England during the Middle Ages, and are a hallmark of the Anglo-American common law legal system. They are still commonly used today in Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries descended from England's legal traditions.

The plaintiff's age was apparently at issue in the case, and the plaintiff offered the testimony of his brother, who offered to testify regarding their parents’ statements regarding the plaintiff's age. The court refused to admit this testimony, ruling that it constituted inadmissible hearsay.

Hearsay is an out-of-court statement being offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. The Federal Rules of Evidence prohibit introducing hearsay statements during applicable federal court proceedings, unless one of nearly thirty exemptions or exceptions applies. The Federal Rules of Evidence define hearsay as:

A statement that: (1) the declarant does not make while testifying at the current trial or hearing; and (2) a party offers in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement..

The underlying dispute, as with so many early colonial cases, was over ownership of land, but Dallas's report does not specify where in the Pennsylvania colony it was located. The defendant (presumably, Robeson) relied on a colonial Chancery Court decree as evidence of his title to the land. However, the Pennsylvania Provincial Act creating the Chancery Court had been repealed by the King and the Council. (King George and his Council often repealed acts of colonial legislatures, especially those acts creating instruments of independent government, or otherwise asserting the rights of colonists.) [3] The Chancery Court's decree regarding the disputed title had been issued after the King and Council had repealed the Act, but before notice of such repeal reached Pennsylvania. The issue, therefor was whether the Act was effectively repealed by the date when the Chancery Court issued its decree. If it was repealed, then the Court was without legal existence, and its decree would be meaningless. If, however, the Act creating the Court was not considered repealed until notice of that repeal reached Pennsylvania, then the Chancery Court decree was still valid, and supported the defendant's title to the land.

Dallas's report indicates that the trial Court instructed the jury that the Act was not nullified until notice of that nullification was received in Pennsylvania. The jury then agreed, determining that the Chancery Court decree was valid, and finding for the defendant.

Precedent's effect

Lessee of Albertson v. Robeson would be cited into the latter half of the 19th century for the proposition of the law of evidence that testimony regarding a parent's statements about the birthdate or age of that parent's child constituted hearsay. [4] It would also be cited as authority for a court, when the passage of a statute is questioned, to look beyond the printed statute, to the circumstances surrounding its passage. [5] Toward that end, the journals of Congress, the various state legislatures, and the British House of Lords are admissible as evidence of their proceedings. [6]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Cohen, Morris and O’Connor, Sharon H. A Guide to the Early Reports of the Supreme Court of the United States, (Fred B. Rothman & Co, Littleton Colorado, 1995)
  2. ↑ Hall, Kermit, ed. Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States (Oxford 1992), p 215, 727
  3. ↑ Carpenter, A. H., Habeas Corpus in the Colonies, 9 Amer. Hist. Rev. 18, 23(1904)
  4. ↑ Lyman v. People, 7 Ill. App. 345 (1880); Tyler v Flanders, 57 N.H. 618 (1876)
  5. ↑ Legg v. Mayor, Counsellor, and Aldermen of the City of Annapolis, 42 Md. 203 (1875)
  6. ↑ Southwark Bank v. Commonwealth, 26 Pa. 446 (1856)

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References

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