Pennsylvania High Court of Errors and Appeals
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Pennsylvania High Court of Errors and Appeals was a public tribunal existing from 1780 to 1808; it was the court of last resort in the
Commonwealth A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically, it has been synonymous with "republic". The noun "commonwealth", meaning "public welfare, general good or advantage", dates from the ...
. The
Pennsylvania General Assembly The Pennsylvania General Assembly is the legislature of the U.S. commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The legislature convenes in the State Capitol building in Harrisburg. In colonial times (1682–1776), the legislature was known as the Pennsylvania ...
created it during the
American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...
to take the place of the British Appeals Committee of the Privy Council. The High Court heard cases from the
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Unified Judicial System. It also claims to be the oldest appellate court in the United States, a claim that is disputed by the Massachusetts Supreme Ju ...
and other lower state courts. Eventually the General Assembly voted to abolish the High Court, effective in 1808, and transfer its powers to the state supreme court.


Establishment

Until the
Declaration of Independence A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of th ...
in 1776, the ultimate tribunal for the American colonies was the
Privy Council A privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a state, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government. The word "privy" means "private" or "secret"; thus, a privy council was originally a committee of the mo ...
in London. Then as now, a committee of the Privy Council heard cases from certain overseas jurisdictions under the rule of the
British crown The Crown is the state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth realms and their subdivisions (such as the Crown Dependencies, overseas territories, provinces, or states). Legally ill-defined, the term has different ...
. One legal effect of American Independence, however, was permanently ending the flow of cases to London from the newly-independent United States. A judicial void was left by the disappearance of the Privy Council as the final tribunal for the Commonwealth. An Act in 1780 established the High Court of Errors and Appeals. The High Court's jurisdiction encompassed cases brought up from Pennsylvania's supreme court, register's courts, and state
admiralty court Admiralty courts, also known as maritime courts, are courts exercising jurisdiction over all maritime contracts, torts, injuries, and offences. Admiralty courts in the United Kingdom England and Wales Scotland The Scottish court's earliest ...
. The establishing statute recited, "the good people of this commonwealth, by their happy deliverance from their late dependent condition
n Britain N, or n, is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''. History ...
and by becoming free and sovereign are released from this badge of slavery and have acquired the transcendent benefit of having justice administered to them at home and at moderate cost and charges." The 1780 Act permitted parties whose cases to the Privy Council had not been adjudicated by July 4, 1776−the date of American Independence−to refile their cases in the new High Court.


Name of the court

The High Court was called a court of "Errors and Appeals", and not a court " of Appeals" because in the English judicial process there was a difference between a proceeding in error and an appeal. Baker, Sir John. ''An Introduction to English Legal History'' Fifth Edition. Oxford:
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...
(2019), p. 146.
"A writ of error ordered judges to send the record of their proceedings in a particular case to a superior court for inspection. ... The court of error could concern itself only with 'manifest error' revealed by the written words (as where an essential procedural step was missing), or with new facts The other party in the case would hear the alleged errors and could dispute them. After argument by the attorneys for each party, the court of errors could affirm or reverse the judgment of the lower court. In contrast, an
appeal In law, an appeal is the process in which cases are reviewed by a higher authority, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. Appeals function both as a process for error correction as well as a process of clarifying and ...
allowed a higher court to look "behind the record" of the written words and determine, for example, if the lower court had made a mistake in law in the case.


Courtrooms

Despite the difficulties of travel for almost 300 miles and across the
Allegheny Mountains The Allegheny Mountain Range (; also spelled Alleghany or Allegany), informally the Alleghenies, is part of the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of the Eastern United States and Canada and posed a significant barrier to land travel in less devel ...
from the western part of Pennsylvania, the 1780 Act directed that the High Court was to sit only in
Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...
, in the far southeastern corner of the Commonwealth. In Philadelphia the High Court met in the Pennsylvania State House (now
Independence Hall Independence Hall is a historic civic building in Philadelphia, where both the United States Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were debated and adopted by America's Founding Fathers. The structure forms the centerpi ...
), in the courtroom usually used by the state supreme court, directly across the vestibule from the Assembly Room in which both the
Declaration of Independence A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of th ...
and
United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the natio ...
were debated and signed. In 1804, however, the High Court's sessions moved to the Philadelphia County Courthouse (now called
Congress Hall Congress Hall, located in Philadelphia at the intersection of Chestnut and 6th Streets, served as the seat of the United States Congress from December 6, 1790, to May 14, 1800. During Congress Hall's duration as the capitol of the United State ...
), where it met until the court's dissolution in 1808.Konkle, Burton Alva. ''Benjamin Chew, 1722-1810.'' Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1932), pp. 218, 278, 284.


Judges

When first set up, the judges of the High Court comprised the president of the Supreme Executive Council, the judges of the supreme court, the judge of the Pennsylvania admiralty court, and "three persons of known integrity and ability". Until its 1791 reorganization, the High Court's members included both non-lawyers such as
Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading int ...
, and noted lawyers as Joseph Reed, and
John Dickinson John Dickinson (November 13 Julian_calendar">/nowiki>Julian_calendar_November_2.html" ;"title="Julian_calendar.html" ;"title="/nowiki>Julian calendar">/nowiki>Julian calendar November 2">Julian_calendar.html" ;"title="/nowiki>Julian calendar" ...
. Some of the existing judges were reappointed after the General Assembly reorganized the High Court in 1791.


Judges of the High Court of Errors and Appeals, 1780–1808


Reorganization and abolition

After Pennsylvania's Constitution of 1790 became effective, the Supreme Executive Council was replaced by a single
Governor of Pennsylvania A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...
, and the judicial, legislative, and executive powers were separated for the first time in the Commonwealth. The General Assembly necessarily needed to change the composition of the High Court to comply with the new constitution's prescribed
separation of powers Separation of powers refers to the division of a state's government into branches, each with separate, independent powers and responsibilities, so that the powers of one branch are not in conflict with those of the other branches. The typi ...
. Under a 1791 Act, the High Court's bench was redefined as comprising the judges of the supreme court, the presidents of the various courts of
common pleas A court of common pleas is a common kind of court structure found in various common law jurisdictions. The form originated with the Court of Common Pleas at Westminster, which was created to permit individuals to press civil grievances against o ...
throughout the Commonwealth, and three other persons of known legal ability. In addition, since the federal courts had taken on exclusive admiralty jurisdiction after the
United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the natio ...
came into force in 1789, there was no more Pennsylvania Admiralty Court, and so no state admiralty cases for the High Court to hear, and no admiralty judge to sit on the High Court's bench. By 1806 the General Assembly determined there was no further need for a judicial layer above the state supreme court (in its entire existence only thirty-three cases had been argued before the High Court); it abolished the High Court of Errors and Appeals and transferred its jurisdiction over appeals and errors to the state supreme court, to be effective in 1808 so that the High Court would have two additional terms to dispose of pending cases before dissolving. The terminal hearing of the High Court was on July 10, 1808.


Case reports

Not all cases in the High Court resulted in an opinion and not all of its opinions have been published.


United States Reports

Alexander Dallas, a lawyer in Philadelphia who later served as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, began publishing a series of case reports in what became the ''
United States Reports The ''United States Reports'' () are the official record ( law reports) of the Supreme Court of the United States. They include rulings, orders, case tables (list of every case decided), in alphabetical order both by the name of the petitioner ...
''. The decisions appearing in the early ''United States Reports'' are not decisions only of the
United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
as they were in subsequent volumes. Instead, they include decisions from various Pennsylvania courts. Dallas published a total of four volumes of decisions, and selected cases of the Pennsylvania High Court of Errors and Appeals appear in the first,
second The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds ea ...
, and fourth of Dallas's volumes.


Other reporters

Other cases from the High Court (some only mentioned in short notes) are scattered throughout Pennsylvania case compilations by Alexander Addison (Addison's Reports (Add.)), Jasper Yeates (Yeates's Reports (Yeates)), Horace Binney (Binney's Reports (Binn.)), and Peter A. Browne (Browne's Reports).


Partial list of cases in the High Court of Errors and Appeals, 1780–1808


Records

Records of the High Court are held at the
Pennsylvania State Archives The Pennsylvania State Archives is the official archive for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, administered as part of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Located at 350 North Street in the state capital of Harrisburg, it is a part o ...
in the capital city,
Harrisburg Harrisburg is the capital city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Dauphin County. With a population of 50,135 as of the 2021 census, Harrisburg is the 9th largest city and 15th largest municipality in ...
. These records are:


Minutes and writs of the High Court of Errors and Appeals

A record of the proceedings of the High Court of Errors and Appeals between April 6, 1780 and July 2, 1808. Data includes date of session, names of plaintiff (appellant), defendant (appellee), their attorneys, court members present; listings of writs of error and docketed cases, the courts or counties from which the appeal was made, and a listing of cases argued, adjudged and subsequent orders by the court. (Series #33.128)


Mittimus papers

MittimusIn this context, a "mittimus" is a
writ In common law, a writ (Anglo-Saxon ''gewrit'', Latin ''breve'') is a formal written order issued by a body with administrative or judicial jurisdiction; in modern usage, this body is generally a court. Warrants, prerogative writs, subpoenas, a ...
for moving papers from one court to another, e.g., from the High Court to the lower court from which the appeal originated. See Wiktionary, second definition under "Noun"

/ref> papers covering the years 1783–1785, 1788, 1792–1793, 1795, 1798–1799, 1801, and 1804. These include writs affirming the judgments of the Supreme Court as decided by the High Court of Errors and Appeals, and remitting the case back to the Supreme Court for execution of judgment. Information has names of appellant and appellee; nature of the case; High Court of Errors and Appeals judgment; date writ was returned to the Supreme Court. (Series #33.129)


See also

*
List of Privy Counsellors (1714–1820) This is a List of Privy Counsellors of the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom appointed between the accession of King George I in 1714 and the death of King George III in 1820. George I, 1714–1727 1714 * James Lowther (1673–1 ...
*
Courts of Pennsylvania Courts of Pennsylvania include: ;State courts of Pennsylvania *Supreme Court of Pennsylvania **Superior Court of Pennsylvania (3 districts) **Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ***Pennsylvania courts of common pleas, Pennsylvania Courts of Common P ...
*
List of justices of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania Current Bench Complete list of justices Notes References {{Lists of US Justices * Pennsylvania Justices A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a ...


References

{{Authority control Defunct state courts of the United States Legal history of Pennsylvania 1780 establishments in Pennsylvania Courts and tribunals established in 1780