Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme Court of the United States Volume 41

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1903 Excerpt: ... United States v. Eliason. England, which, although it is not hrought sufficiently to the view of this court, to justify any direct inferences as to its terms, or its bearing upon this particular question, may have been designed to remedy the very evil pointed out by Justice Blackstone. By a note to page 92, of Mr. Stephen's Treatise, it is said to have been enacted by 3 & 4 Wm. IV., c. 42, that where the parties, on issue joined, can agree on a statement of facts, they may, by order of a judge, draw up such statement in the form of a special case, for the judgment of the court, without proceeding to trial. By the established practice, anterior to this statutory provision, it was in the power of the parties to agree upon a statement of the case; it would seem reasonable and probable, therefore, that the power given to the judge (as an exercise of his judicial functions) to regulate the statement, was designed to impart a greater solemnity and permanency to the preparation of the proceeding, and to place it in an attitude for the action of some revising power. But even should a want of familiarity with the detail of English practice induce the hazard of misapprehension of its rules, or of the reasons in which they have their origin, the decisions of our own courts, and the longestablished practice of our own country, are regarded as having put the point under consideration entirely at rest. By the act of congress of 1801, assuming the government of 301-, the district of Columbia, in virtue of the cession from Maryland and Virginia, the laws of these states, and, of course, the proceedings in their courts as parts of these laws, were expressly recognised within such portions of the district, respectively, as originally were within the limits of the ceding stat...