Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 21.pdf/18

 Anglo-Saxon Law in Liberiat Peter as another man's wife, and Peter should have sued this new "pryer" to return to him his dowry money. This case is of interest as exhibiting the attempt of a Liberian court of AngloSaxon traditions to administer native customary law. In only a few instances does the Supreme Court seem to have passed upon such matters. Usually it has been called upon to settle questions of the law of property, contracts or admiralty arising among the better edu cated class of citizens, and has settled such questions in accordance with the principles laid down by Blackstone and Chancellor Kent, and other standard writers on the common law.• There are a few, but not many references to United States cases. The Court rarely cites its own decisions, and no complete sets of American or English law reports seem to have been accessible, though Chief Justice Marshall and other American judges are sometimes quoted with marked respect. The absence of an organic body of precedents strips the style of the Supreme Court decisions of elaborate technicality. In fact, in many instances the only method applied seems to have been that based on unaided common sense. Count less decisions are handed down without reference to a solitary precedent or cita tion of a single authority. For example, in Davis v. Republic (1862), p. 17, the court brought natives under the Libe rian Constitution by ruling that "our native inhabitants under treaty stipu lations, which treaties are laws when confirmed by the Legislature, are bona fide subjects of this state, and the politiThe works cited include Bouvier's Dictionary, Bouvier's Institutes, Story on the Constitution, Story's Equity, Adams on Equity, Greenleaf's Evidence, Parsons on Contracts, Redfield on Wills, Broom's Commentaries and Legal Maxims, Free man on Judgments, Raymond on Bill of Excep tions, Bacon s Abridgment, Benedict's Admiralty, Hindmarch on Patents, etc.

5

cal authority of the same covers them in all of their relations." No legal prin ciples or authorities were referred to for this assertion of the right of sover eignty over natives, just as in another case (Harris v. Republic, p. 39) no authority was cited for the principle of territorial sovereignty over aliens. An interesting example of the blend ing of native and Anglo-Saxon institu tions is shown in the case of Gray v. Beverly, p. 500. The Court here ruled that an act passed in 1869, creating an Interior Department, was designed to confer upon the Secretary of the Interior the power of acting as a sort of arbiter in all purely native matters, "which he must settle with due regard to native customary law and native institutions, where not repugnant to the organic law of the state." The Court expressed the opinion that in dealing with questions regarding "the rightful ownership and possession of native women, who according to native law are regarded and treated as chat tels," occasions might arise where the Secretary of the Interior would have to issue orders for the arrest and delivery of individuals to a native chief. But the Court decided that to permit the detention of such individuals, with out evidence that their detention was lawful, was repugnant to the Constitu tion when their cases were brought be fore the Court on a writ of habeas corpus, "this highest writ of the country, the privilege and benefit of which, accord ing to the language of the Constitution, 'shall be enjoyed in this Republic, in the most free, easy, cheap, expeditious, and ample manner.'" In this case, though the decision dealt with a problem of great moment, the only citations were those referring to the Constitution and statutes of Liberia.