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15 November 2007
LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN... Quoting that link... "all Supreme Court decisions since 1754." There was a Supreme Court 22 years before the Declaration of Independence? Did I miss something in American History class?
Typo, the Constitution set up the Supreme Court. There simply would be no Supreme Court before the nation was a nation (rather contradictory). The first case is Chisholm v. Georgia, which wasn't until the early 1790s. It took awhile to get things going.
1754 seems really arbitrary too ... I think they meant 1794.
I stand corrected, from The United States Supreme Court Cases Vol 1:
HYAM'S LESSEE v. EDWARDS, 1 U.S. 1 (1759)
It is from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but why it is listed under the United States Supreme Court cases is beyond me. Penn had the first independent Supreme Court ... but it predates 1754, but quite some time. This is getting interesting.
Okay if you go here and click by volume and go to the first volume you get the Penn case of 1759.
If you go by year instead of volume, the first case listed is:
West v. Barnes,, 2 U.S. 401, 2 Dall. 401 (1791)
Which is probably a very inconsequential case. My guess is that the first supreme court used a lot of rulings from the earlier Pennslyvania court, which was independent and well established at the time, and so the first volume of cases includes the Penn Supreme Court cases. The second volume is really where it gets started.
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