Terrett v. Taylor

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Terrett v. Taylor
L. Ed. 650
Case history
PriorError to the United States Circuit Court of the District of Columbia
Holding
The Virginia law confiscating the church's lands is void.
Court membership
Chief Justice
John Marshall
Associate Justices
Bushrod Washington · William Johnson
H. Brockholst Livingston · Thomas Todd
Gabriel Duvall · Joseph Story
Case opinion
MajorityStory, joined by unanimous
Johnson and Todd took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

Terrett v. Taylor, 13 U.S. (9 Cranch) 43 (1815), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Background

See also: Religion in early Virginia

The

trustees to manage it. Still, non-Episcopalians viewed the situation as unfair: the Episcopal Church retained its substantial amounts of land, but other groups (which had formerly not been allowed to own property at all) had no such holdings. The fact that the shrinking Episcopal Church was associated with the British Crown and the Federalist aristocracy worsened resentments.[1]

Jeffersonians obtained a majority in the Virginia legislature midway through the

District of Columbia. They sued the overseers of the poor of Fairfax County, Virginia, in the federal circuit court in D.C. to quiet their title to the glebe lands.[1][4] The vestrymen prevailed at trial, and the case was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States.[5]

Decision

In an opinion by Justice Joseph Story delivered on February 17, 1815, the Court held that Virginia could not confiscate the Episcopal lands.[2] He wrote:[3]

[T]hat the legislature can repeal statutes creating private corporations, or confirming to them property already acquired under the faith of previous laws, and by such repeal can vest the property of such corporations exclusively in the state, or dispose of the same to such purposes as they may please, without the consent or default of the corporations, we are not prepared to admit; and we think ourselves standing upon the principles of natural justice, upon the fundamental laws of every free government, upon the spirit and the letter of the Constitution of the United States, and upon the decisions of most respectable judicial tribunals, in resisting such a doctrine.

In referencing "the spirit and the letter" of the Constitution, Story did not indicate which particular constitutional provision had been violated.

Leonard Levy describes Terrett as "the first case and one of the very few in which the Supreme Court relied exclusively on upon the concept of a higher law as the sole basis for holding a state act unconstitutional",[6] although the historian David Garrow suggests that Story's reference to "natural justice" was "meant only to express his moral outrage along the way to his clear conclusion" that the law violated the Constitution.[7]

Justices Johnson and Todd were not present when the case was decided. Story commented that the decision was that of a "majority of the Court", which in White's view indicates that at least one of the other justices may have disagreed.[3]

References

  1. ^
    Tulsa Law Review
    . 37 (1): 8–20.
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-1-56802-720-3
    .
  3. ^
    ISBN 0-02-934551-0
    .
  4. ISBN 978-0-226-67724-8
    .
  5. ISBN 978-0-7006-0761-7
    .
  6. ^
    ISBN 0-02-918610-2
    .
  7. ^
    ISBN 978-0-226-22242-4
    .
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