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Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee
1 Wheaton 304 (1816)
Lord Fairfax, a Loyalist residing in Virginia who fled to England during
the American Revolution, died in 1781. He willed a vast tract of land in
northern Virginia to his nephew, Denny Martin, a British subject. Virginia
confiscated the property under a special law passed after the death of
Fairfax; and the common law of Virginia also forbade enemy aliens to inherit land.
Virginia thereupon sold part of the land to David Hunter in 1789. Litigation began in 1791 for the recovery of the property, and finally in 1810
the Virginia court of appeals sustained Hunter’s title to the land. In 1813,
however, the Supreme Court reviewed the case and held that, under the
Treaty of 1794 with England, all British-owned property in the United
States, including Denny Martin’s, was protected from confiscation. In
open defiance, the Virginia court of appeals declared that Section 25 of
the Judiciary Act of 1789, which authorized the Supreme Court to review
State court decisions, was unconstitutional.
Mr. Justice Story delivered the opinion of the Court, saying in part:
This is a writ of error from the Court of Appeals of Virginia, founded
upon the refusal of that court to obey the mandate of this court, requiring
the judgment rendered in this very cause, at February Term, 1813, to be
carried into due execution. The following is the judgment of the Court of
Appeals rendered on the mandate: ‘‘The court is unanimously of opinion, that the appellate power of the Supreme Court of the United States
does not extend to this court, under a sound construction of the Constitution of the United States; that so much of the 25th section of the Act of
Congress to establish the Judicial Courts of the United States, as extends
the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to this court, is not in
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