West v. Barnes

Decided Auguft Term, 1791.

Supreme Court of the United States · decided 1791-08

West v. Barnes, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 401 (1791), was the first United States Supreme Court decision and the earliest case calling for oral argument. Van Staphorst v. Maryland (1791) was docketed prior to West v. Barnes but settled before the Court heard the case: West was argued on August 2 and decided on August 3, 1791. Collet v. Collet (1792) was the first appellate case docketed with the Court but was dropped before it could be heard. Supreme Court Reporter Alexander Dallas did not publish the justices' full opinions in West v. Barnes, which were published in various newspapers around the country at the time, but he published an abbreviated summary of the decision.

Source: Wikipedia ↗

1 counsel of record

Relies on Anonymous · Vanstophorst v. Maryland

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1791-08

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 1999

1 federal appellate ·

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1ON the firft day of the term, Bradford prefented to the court, a writ, purporting to.be a writ of error, iflued out pf the oflice of the clerk of the circuit court for Rhode JJland diftrift, • directed to th.at,court, 'and commanding a return of the judgment and proceedings rendered by them in this caufe ; And thereupon he moved for a rule, that the defendant rejoin to the errors affighed in this caufe.

¶2Barnes, one of the defendants,

¶3(a counféllor of .the court) objected to the validity of- the writ, that it had iflued out of the wrong office: and, after argument,-

¶4The Court

¶5were unanimouily of opinion, That writs of error to remove caufes to this .court from inferior courts, can regularly iflue only from the clerk’s office of this court. '

¶6Motion refufed.