March 16, 1810 – Supreme Court Decides Fletcher v. Peck, Expanding Parameters of Judicial Review

The state of Georgia claimed sovereignty over a large tract of land (some 35-40 million acres) known as “Yazoo,” most of which was occupied by native tribes (but far be it from white settlers to recognize their claims.) In any event, in 1794, Georgia passed the Yazoo Land Act and sold most of these same lands to four companies. The companies then quickly sold the property off to to private speculators at a very low price.

Map showing the four initial Yazoo Act land deals

Shortly thereafter, it came out that most of the legislators voting for the Yazoo Land Act had been bribed or owned stakes in the businesses purchasing the property. After several lawmakers were voted out of office in response to these revelations of corruption, the new legislature in 1795 declared the earlier grants void, basically maintaining that the sales had legally never happened. Such a declaration flew in the face of one of the few early constitutional restrictions on state power, namely the Contracts Clause of Article I, Section 10 prohibiting states from passing any “law impairing the obligation of contracts.” Meanwhile, as reported on the website Big Think, all extant copies of the original act were collected and burned at high noon on the grounds of the state capitol under construction, then in Louisville. One copy escaped destruction — the one sent to President Washington.

Several years after the legislature revoked the land grants, John Peck, a speculator from Massachusetts, purchased some of the land in question and subsequently sold it to Robert Fletcher, a colleague from New Hampshire. Fletcher sued Peck for breach of contract, alleging that Peck had falsely represented that he had good title to the land. Peck defended the suit by arguing that the Georgia legislature had violated the Contracts Clause by improperly interfering with the original land grant contract. Since the law was invalid, he claimed, he had held good title to the land and had every right to sell it to Fletcher.

In Fletcher v. Peck (10 U.S. 87, 1810), in a unanimous decision for Peck written by Chief Justice John Marshall, the Court found the legislature’s repeal of the law unconstitutional under Article I, Section 10, Clause I. They concluded the sale between Fletcher and Peck was a binding contract, which under the Contract Clause cannot be invalidated even if it were illegally secured. 

As the Federal Judicial Center maintains, the decision in Fletcher v. Peck expanded the parameters of judicial review, as it marked the first time the Supreme Court struck down a state law as unconstitutional, establishing the principle that federal laws were supreme over state laws. The case also firmly established that a legal contract could not be nullified by a later law, which became an important tenet of contract law.

John Marshall by Henry Inman, 1832

There was a further consequence. Journalist Frank Jacobs points out:

Without the scandal, Georgia might conceivably have managed to hold on to its western lands. This hypothetical Greater Georgia, running from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, would have comprised most or all of the current states of Mississippi and Alabama. That would make it one of America’s most populous states, its 20 million inhabitants, on par with Florida and New York and surpassed only by Texas (30 million) and California (40 million).”