New from the University Press of Kansas:
The Great Yazoo Lands Sale: The Case of Fletcher v. Peck (October 2016), by
Charles F. Hobson (independent scholar). A description from the Press:
In 1795, the Georgia legislature sold the state’s western lands
(present-day Alabama and Mississippi) to four private land companies. A
year later, amid revelations of bribery, a newly elected legislature
revoked the sale. This book tells the story of how the great Yazoo lands
sale gave rise to the 1810 case in which the Supreme Court, under Chief
Justice John Marshall, for the first time ruled the action of a state
to be in violation of the Constitution, specifically the contract
clause.
Truly a landmark case, Fletcher v. Peck established
judicial review of state legislative proceedings, provided a gloss on
the contract clause, and established the preeminent role of the Supreme
Court in private law matters. Beneath the case’s dry legal proceedings
lay a tangle of speculating mania, corruption, and political rivalry,
which Charles Hobson unravels with narrative aplomb. As the scene shifts
from the frontier to the courtroom, and from Georgia to New England,
the cast of characters includes sharp dealers like Robert Morris,
hot-headed politicians like James Jackson, and able counsel like John
Quincy Adams, along with, of course, John Marshall himself. The
improbably dramatic tale opens a window on land transactions, Indian
relations, and the politics of the early nation, thereby revealing how
the controversy over the Yazoo lands sale reflected a deeper crisis over
the meaning of republicanism. Hobson, a leading scholar of the Marshall
Court, lays out the details of the litigation with great clarity even
as he presents a longer view of the implications and consequences of Fletcher v. Peck.
More information is available
here.
