Judge Peters, United States v. 5 Cranch 115 (1809)

• Author: Leonard W. Levy
• Pages: 1441-1442

Page 1441

This case bears historical significance as an episode in defiance, expressed in NULLIFICATION and bordering on rebellion, by a state against the United States courts. The state was Pennsylvania, which suggests that doctrines of state sovereignty have never been merely sectional. The case was the occasion of Chief Justice JOHN MARSHALLS'S first nationalist opinion, but more important is the fact that Pennsylvania successfully thwarted the federal courts, exposing their helplessness in enforcing their writs, until a President of the Virginia dynasty unhesitatingly backed the judiciary, still Federalist-dominated, against the political machine of his own party in Pennsylvania.

The case originated during the Revolution as the result of a dispute between the state and Gideon Olmstead over the proceeds from the sale of a captured enemy ship. A state court denied Olmstead's claim, but a prize court established by Congress ruled in his favor; the state court refused to obey the federal order and the state treasurer retained the money. Litigation went on for years. In 1803 Judge RICHARD PETERS of the United States District court in Philadelphia decided in favor of Olmstead in his suit against the treasurer's estate, which held the money for the state. The state legislature, invoking the ELEVENTH AMENDMENT, resolved that Peters had "illegally usurped" JURISDICTION and instructed the governor to protect the rights of the state. In 1808 Olmstead, then in his eighties, obtained from the Supreme Court an order against Peters to show cause why a WRIT OF MANDAMUS should not be issued compelling him to enforce his decision of 1803. The judge stated that the state legislature had commanded the governor "to call out an armed force" to prevent the execution of a federal process. Peters asked for a resolution of the issue by the supreme tribunal of the nation, saying that he had withheld process to avoid a conflict between the state and federal governments.

In 1809, at a time when New England was disobeying the EMBARGO ACTS, Marshall, speaking for the Court, declared:

If the legislatures of the several states may, at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgements, the constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery, and the nation is deprived of the means of enforcing its laws by the instrumentality of its own tribunals. So fatal a result must be deprecated by all...