Hewes v. M'Dowell

Last updated April 07, 2019

Hewes v. M'Dowell, 1 U.S. 5 (1762) 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, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern 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> official record of the rulings, orders, case tables, and other proceedings of the Supreme Court of the United States

The United States Reports are the official record of the rulings, orders, case tables, in alphabetical order both by the name of the petitioner and by the name of the respondent, and other proceedings of the Supreme Court of the United States. 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.

Colonial and state court decisions 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 publishing and selling these cases for newspapers and periodicals. He subsequently began compiling and selling these cases 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.

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, the complete citation to Lessee of Hewes v M'Dowell is 1 U.S. 5 (1 Dallas 5) (1762).

The decision

According to Dallas's annotations, the case involved the description of a tract of land within the Pennsylvania colony. The issue was whether the Book of Memorandums of the Secretary of the Land Office, which bore the Warrant of Survey conducted by the Surveyor General, was admissible into evidence. Dallas reports that the Court noted that the Book was "of Consequence" and that the Court urged "the other side" (which side, is not revealed) to consent to the Book's being given in evidence. The "other side" agreed, and the Book was given into evidence. Beyond that, the Court purportedly made no decision regarding its admissibility into evidence.

However, the language of the decision itself suggests that the Court did in fact make a determination that the Book was admissible, and allowed it to be presented to the jury. The seeming lack of agreement between Dallas's notes of the case, and the purported language of the Court's decision has apparently never been reconciled.

Precedential effect

A year later, the Pennsylvania Supreme Provincial Court would cite M'Dowell as precedent for the admission of an Order for a land survey in Fothergill's Lessee v. Stover, another case involving irregularities in the processing of land grants.

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Unified Judicial System. It also claims to be the oldest appellate court in the United States, a claim that is disputed by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania began in 1684 as the Provincial Court, and casual references to it as the "Supreme Court" of Pennsylvania were made official in 1722 upon its reorganization as an entity separate from the control of the royal governor. Today, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania maintains a discretionary docket, meaning that the Court may choose which cases it accepts, with the exception of mandatory death penalty appeals, and certain appeals from the original jurisdiction of the Commonwealth Court. This discretion allows the Court to wield powerful influence on the formation and interpretation of Pennsylvania law.

Lessee of Fothergill v. Fothergill, 1 U.S. 6 (1763) is a decision of the Pennsylvania Provincial Supreme 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.

Notes

↑ 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
↑ Hall, Kermit, ed. Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States (Oxford 1992), p 215, 727

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This is a list of all the cases from volume 1 of the United States Reports. None of the decisions appearing in the first volume and only a few in the second volume of United States Reports are actually decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. Instead, they are decisions from various Pennsylvania courts dating from the colonial period and the first decade after independence. Alexander J. Dallas, a Philadelphia 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. This would come to be known as the first volume of Dallas Reports.

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References

Hall, Kermit, ed. Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States (Oxford 1992),

Goebel, Jr., Julius, The Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States Volume 1: Antecedents and Beginnings to 1801 (Macmillan, 1971)

Walters, jr., Raymond Alexander Dallas: Lawyer -- Politician -- Financier, 1759 - 1817 (Da Capo Press, 1969)

Lessee of Hewes v M'Dowell, 1 U.S. 5 (1 Dall. 5) (1762)