Fletcher v. Peck

If a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, John Marshall, chief justice of the United States, was a genius. In Fletcher v. Peck (1810), ostensibly a question regarding a state legislature’s power to abrogate the contractual obligation of a preceding legislature, Marshall—as in MARBURY V. MADISON (1803)—produced an opinion that further expanded the role of the Supreme Court in judicial review of legislative acts.

The state of Georgia had laid claim in 1785 to an extensive tract of land to its west known as the Yazoo territory, which would ultimately become part of Alabama and Mississippi. Four land companies bribed members of the Georgia legislature to pass a bill on January 7, 1795, selling twothirds of the land to these companies. A subsequent legislature in the winter of 1795–96 repealed the earlier body’s sale of the land but did not return the money paid for it.

In 1802 Georgia again sold its western territory, this time to the federal government, for $1.25 million. Some of the speculators, however, wanted to proceed against Georgia for the loss of their title. Because a direct suit against a state is barred by the Eleventh Amendment (1798), a collusive suit (one in which the parties are not actually adversaries) was filed by John Peck and Robert Fletcher to address the question of Georgia’s obligation to those injured in what had become known as the Yazoo land scandal. Peck, a citizen of Massachusetts, had sold 15,000 acres of Yazoo land to Fletcher, so Fletcher sued basically to test whether his title to the land was good or void because of the repeal of the sale.

The difficulty in determining what the Constitution allowed in this case stemmed from the fact that the contract clause found in Article I, section 10, provides, “No state shall…pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts…,” while an elementary rule of government precludes any legislature from binding a future legislature. In other words, the legislative repeal of the sale of the Yazoo land to speculators was valid, yet it seemed to violate the Constitution’s prohibition against impairing contractual obligations. In his opinion Marshall addressed a number of other, somewhat tangential issues: the distinction between public and private contracts and between executory and executed contracts as well as ex post facto laws.

In the end Marshall based the Supreme Court’s decision on both the Constitution and extraconstitutional principles in a vague and general way. Encompassing both executory and executed as well as public and private contracts, the Court found that state legislatures may not disturb [Page 226] vested rights—ones that citizens have come to rely on as valid—and therefore the subsequent legislature’s repeal of the earlier sale of Yazoo land was invalid. The ruling’s chief importance, however, was that the notion of vested rights was now incorporated into the Constitution. This expanded protection for property rights simultaneously broadened the Court’s role in the judicial review of state legislation.

Fletcher v. Peck, the Supreme Court’s first decision on the Constitution’s contract clause, highlights the Court’s refusal to look at the motives behind state legislative acts, such as whether the Georgia legislature’s initial act in selling the land had been furthered by bribery. More important, in making decisions on the limitations of government, the case represents the Court’s reliance for guidance not only on the Constitution itself but also on “general principles which are common to our free institutions.” Such principles may present a fundamental inconsistency for a government based on a written constitution. But just as an unwritten constitution contains documents of constitutional stature—Magna Carta (1215), for example, is a part of the United Kingdom’s unwritten constitution—a written constitution such as America’s may have unwritten constitutional elements alongside it.

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