Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/129

Rh At this Term, only two cases were heard, but each was closely connected with vital political issues. The first, Georgia v. Brailsfordy involved another phase of the question of State sovereignty and presented a cu- rious history. Brailsford, an alien and a British credi- tor, had sued a Georgia citizen in the United States Circuit Court on a debt which the State of Georgia had sequestrated.^ The State, however, applied to the Circuit Court to be admitted as a party defendant in order to set up its title to the proi>erty, and having been refused had filed an original bill in equity in the Supreme Court seeking an injunction against the Cir- cuit Court proceedings. Thus, while complaining in the Chiskolm Case because it had been made a party to a suit by a British creditor, Georgia was complaining in the Brailsford Case because it had not been allowed to become a party in another suit by a British cred- itor. After argument by Alexander J. Dallas against Edmund Randolph, at an earlier Term, the Court had decided that a temporary injunction should issue. It is interesting to note that in this first case in which opinions of the Judges were reported, the first opinion to be expressed had been a dissent by Judge Johnson. The decision had elicited from Randolph a pungent letter in which he expressed to James Madison decidedly uncomplimentary views of the Court: "The State of Georgia applied for an injunction to stop in the

Supreme Court Judge had been created during the period for which Paterson had been elected Senator from New Jetaey. When Washington's attention was called to this, he sent a message to the Senate, Feb. 28, 1798, saying: "I was led by a consideration of the qualifications of William Paterson of New Jersey to nominate him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. It has since occurred that he was a member of the Senate when the law creating that office was passed, and that the time for which he was elected is not yet expired. I think it my duty, therefore, to declare that I deem the nomination to have been null by the Constitution.**

' See Samuel Brailrford v. James Spalding in which Judge Iredell had held that the Treaty repealed the State law sequestrating British debts. OoMette of the United Staiei, May 16, 1792; Georgia v. Brailrford, 2 Dallas, 402, 415, 8 Dallas. 1.