¶1dissenting. What may be the province of the court in the interpretation of foreign laws for the benefit of the jury I do not deem it necessary to determine, as I conceive no such question is involved in this record. The question for the jury was, whether slavery existed in Canada. No statute was produced creating or establishing that institution which called for the interpretation of the court. From the fact that there were laws and documents, in which reference was made to slaves, or which contemplated a state of slavery, it was to be inferred that slavery lawfully existed in Canada. That inference was one of fact to be made by the jury. As the jury have found the fact, whose exclusive province it was to do so, the practice -of this court, now established for a number of years, forbids that a judgment should be reversed because a verdict is against the weight of evidence.
25 Mo. 465
Charlotte v. Chouteau
Decided October 15, 1857
Supreme Court of Missouri · decided 1857-10-15
Louis Circuit Court. The facts sufficiently appear in the opinion of the court. I. The documentary evidence adduced by the defendant, consisting of the articles of capitulation, the treaty of peace, the act of 1771, the act of 1790 and the act of 1793 demonstrate the existence of negro slavery and its legality from 1763 until 1793. II. The testimony of Messrs.
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Decided 1857-10-15
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently March 1947
12 state decisions
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.
View the full empirical analysis of this case →