From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fletcher v. Peck
Fletcher v. Peck
Fletcher v. Peck
Supreme Court of the United States Argued February 15, 1810 Decided March 16, 1810 Full case name Citations Robert Fletcher v. John Peck 10 U.S. 87 (more) 10 U.S. (6 Cranch) 87; 3 L. Ed. 162;1810 U.S. LEXIS 322; Demurrer overruled, D. Mass None
Prior history Subsequent history Holding
The Contracts Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibited Georgia from voiding contracts for the transfer of land, even though they were secured through illegal bribery. Circuit Court for the District of Massachusetts affirmed. Court membership Chief Justice John Marshall Associate Justices William Cushing · Samuel Chase Bushrod Washington · William Johnson Henry B. Livingston Case opinions Majority Marshall, joined by Cushing, Chase, Washington, Livingston, Todd Johnson
Concur/ dissent Laws applied
Supreme Court ruled a state law unconstitutional. In the course of the westward push for the control of Indian lands, the state of Georgia took from the Indians a 35,000,000-acre (140,000 km2) region in the Yazoo River area known as the Yazoo Lands. This land later became the states of Alabama and Mississippi. In 1795 the Georgia legislature divided the area into four tracts. The state then sold the tracts to four separate land development companies for a modest total price of $500,000, i.e. about 1.4 cents per acre, a good deal even at 1790s prices. The Georgia legislature overwhelmingly approved this land grant, known as the Yazoo Land Act of 1795. The case grew out of the 1795 Georgia state legislature’s sale of land in the Yazoo River country (in what is now Mississippi) under the Yazoo Land Act of 1795 to private speculators in return for bribes. Voters rejected most of the incumbents in the next election, and the next legislature, reacting to the public outcry, repealed the law and voided transactions made under it. John Peck had purchased land that had previously been sold under the 1795 act. Peck sold this land to Robert Fletcher and in 1803, Fletcher brought suit against Peck, claiming that he did not have clear title to the land when he sold it. The case reached the Supreme Court, which in a unanimous decision ruled that the state legislature’s repeal of the law was unconstitutional. The opinion, written by John Marshall, argued that the sale was a binding contract, which according to Article I, Section 10, Clause I (the Contract Clause) of the Constitution cannot be invalidated, even if illegally secured. Today the ruling further protects property rights against popular pressures, and is the earliest case of the Court asserting its right to invalidate state laws conflicting with the Constitution.
U.S. Const. art. I, § 10, cl. 1
See also
• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 10 • Yazoo land scandal
Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. 87 (1810), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision. It was the first case in which the
1
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Contract Clause
Fletcher v. Peck
External links
• Text of Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. 87 (1810) is available from: · Enfacto · Findlaw · LII · University of Tulsa • The Oyez Project • Famous Cases • Case Brief for Fletcher v. Peck at Lawnix.com
Further reading
• John Marshall: Definer Of A Nation by Jean Edward Smith, 1996, Henry Holt & Company. • Yazoo: Law and Politics in the New Republic: The Case of Fletcher v. Peck by C. Peter Magrath, 1966 ISBN 0-608-18419-5
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher_v._Peck" Categories: 1810 in law, United States Supreme Court cases, United States federalism case law, History of the United States (1789–1849), Contract Clause cases This page was last modified on 13 May 2009, at 18:20 (UTC). All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) taxdeductible nonprofit charity. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers
2