Quock Walker
| Quock Walker case | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Decided April 1783 |
|
| Rubrum : |
Walker versus Jennison
Jennison versus Caldwell |
| Reference: | not published |
| Facts: | Appellation to the Massachusetts Supreme Court after a slaveholder claim, slaveholder appeal, attorney general indicting slaveholder of assault |
| 1st instance: | Complaint by a slave for assault and release into liberty (granted); Negative pretender complaint by a slave owner for granting shelter (granted) |
| statement | |
| British or colonial customary law may in principle continue to apply in the State of Massachusetts. However, this does not apply to legal clauses that contradict the constitution. Only the principle of regularity is decisive . | |
| Judge | |
| presiding judge: | Chief Justice Cushing |
| attending: | jury |
| Criminal case | |
| presiding judge: | Chief Justice Cushing |
| Associate judges: | Nathaniel Peaslee Sargeant , David Sewall , Increase Sumner |
| Applied Law | |
| Art. 1 of the Massachusetts Constitution | |
The Quock Walker case went down in American history as an impetus for several formative legal developments and occurred before the adoption of the United States Constitution. It is considered the beginning of the actual implementation of the rule of law and the first test for the young Massachusetts constitution .
Quock Walker was born in Worcester County , Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1753 as a slave child on the estate of the well-known Caldwell family and grew up there. His master promised him freedom at the age of 25, but died later. His widow renewed this promise for the completion of the 21st year, however, married a certain Nathaniel Jennison. This considered Walker from then on as his slave.
When Walker turned 21, he unsuccessfully requested his release and fled. He found shelter on the estate of the brothers of his previous owner, the Caldwells. Jennison and his men captured Walker, dragged him back, and after they flogged and badly abused him, he was re-enslaved. This led to several legal proceedings in which the parties sued each other.
backgrounds
It was the time of the American Revolution and the solution of Great Britain. 13 English colonies separated in the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 . After the first restrictions on the slave trade by Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1774 and a total ban on slavery in Vermont in 1777 by means of a constitutional amendment, Massachusetts also adopted a constitution in 1780, which began with a catalog of basic rights:
“ Part 1 Art. I: All human beings are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential and inalienable rights; the right to develop and defend their lives and their freedoms, the right to acquire property, may also apply as such to possess and defend, in short the right to seek and achieve their safety and happiness. "
The question then arose as to how effective these rights would be.
Massachusetts Constitution of 1780
Trials in civil courts
In previous years, the courts in New England had usually ruled in favor of slaves in cases of slavery if a slave was contractually guaranteed release from freedom. In the Walker case, the question arose of how to proceed if the person obliged to discharge dies and the slave becomes the property of a third party. With regard to the widow Caldwell, now Jennison, the universal succession under inheritance law might take effect and leave the legal situation unchanged. However, the effect of the marital property regime raised an independent legal question.
Walker sued in 1781 for his status as a free citizen and for £ 300 damages for bodily harm suffered. The Court of Common Pleas upheld and awarded him only £ 50. Jennison sued the Caldwells for interference in property rights and selfish incitement. The jury of the civil court agreed with him and awarded him £ 25. Against these separate but contradicting decisions, the unsuccessful parties appealed.
Massachusetts Supreme Court decision
In 1783 the two appeals cases reached the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. The attorney general also charged Jennison with ill-treatment and assault. Another prominent case had also reached the court: the appeal in the Brom and Bett case against Ashley of 1781. In this case, a court of first instance had declared two other slaves to be free for violating the constitution.
In the civil proceedings, the court consisted of the chief judge and a jury. The same judgment was reached in the Quock Walker case and his freedom was confirmed. It also issued a default judgment against Jennison. In its instructions to the jury it stated:
“Through the doctrine of slavery and the claim of Christians to keep Africans in permanent bondage and to treat them as we do with our horses and cattle, all of this has really been promoted by provincial law, but never written down as law. It has been a custom ... But whatever opinions may have prevailed and set our example, another idea takes its place in the American people, one that is much more pleasing to the natural rights of humanity and the natural, innate desire for freedom ... ( regardless of color, appearance or nose shape). It is for this very reason that the constitution of our government begins, by which the people of this community have solemnly bound themselves, declaring that all human beings are born free and equal, and that everyone has a right to freedom that the laws protect ... and you is completely contrary to the idea that someone can be born into slavery ... The principle of slavery is incompatible with our own behavior and our constitution and there must be no such thing as the permanent bondage of an intelligent living being ... "
In the criminal case, the court was manned by 4 professional judges and sentenced Jennison to a fine of 40 shillings plus procedural costs.
The appeal in the Brom and Bett case against Ashley was withdrawn in view of this decision, so that these two slaves were finally free.
Effect and meaning
This case is significant in many ways. Its historical context shows that something was put into practical application here that was not previously done, about which at most scholars spoke and was found in the writings of European philosophers of the Enlightenment such as Locke or Montesquieu :
On the one hand, these are the first slaves in North America who were freed on the basis of a law and an act of sovereignty.
Second, in structural terms, the decision shows the scope of a consistent implementation of the Rule of Law , an idea that would later find its European counterpart in the rule of law . Massachusetts demonstratively defined itself as a form of government in which laws rule and not individuals. The handwriting of John Adams is unmistakable:
Part I Article XXX: ... the government of this commonwealth ... to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.
In a legal system shaped by customary law - a mixture of unwritten traditions, codified statutes and their further development through legal practice and amendments - the Massachusetts Supreme Court rejected a traditional practice not only on the basis of a temporal conflict of laws rule , what would have been expected and according to which new law that old displaced. It saw not just a change, an amendment to the old statute, which should have been interpreted alternately with tradition. It recognized a primacy of the constitution and thus a qualitative hierarchy of norms. The main idea was that slavery was a violation of the constitution.
The court also saw the constitution not as a political program, but as directly applicable and enforceable law that does not have to be brought into effect and applied through a legislative act and further regulations. The constitution thus obliges the simple user of the law to comply with the law, just like the small court in the country, the Court of Common Pleas . It thus established the principle of judicial review of legal norms, the so-called Judicial Review .
Ultimately, the principle of legality also means a commandment to reject pre-constitutional (custom) law in the event of a contradiction to the constitution. This does not require waiting for a legislative correction, rather the court saw a separate mandate based on the separation of powers. After all, the defendant slaveholder Jennison had pleaded that the new constitution or state laws never abolished or prohibited slavery.
With the enforcement of constitutional norms by executive or judicial organs, the abandonment of the parliamentary prerogative ( supremacy of parliament ) began .
These ideas can also be found again in the later drafted constitution of the United States and in the development of European state organization:
- Legality of the executive and judiciary, primacy of law and primacy of the constitution
- Judicial review of legal relationships and legal norms, rejection of norms in the event of incompatibility with the constitution
- Immediate validity of the constitution, enforceability of fundamental rights
- Right to justice
Both in terms of personnel and content, the spirit of this decision was carried into the constitutional practice of the later federation. The presiding judge Cushing served for a long time in the Supreme Court of the United States , which derived the constitutional jurisdiction from the Rule of Law - also against parliamentary acts. Even without a mention in the federal constitution, at the latest in 1803 with the decision of Marbury against Madison, the Judicial Review was expanded to include the competence for the substantive control of norms of laws, when the well-known formula was heard:
“Parliamentary resolutions that are against the constitution do not become legally binding. And what the constitution allows, the courts have to find out ... For what purpose would a constitution have, the courts could ignore. "
The Massachusetts Constitution only preserved the impulses of the Quock-Walker case. To this day it is the oldest written constitution in force. It was not changed to outlaw slavery, because it was not necessary.
See also
literature
- John D. Cushing: The Cushing Court and the Abolition of Slavery in Massachusetts: More Notes On the "Quock Walker Case". In: The American Journal of Legal History. Volume 5, No. 2, 1961, ISSN 0002-9319 , pp. 118-144.
- Willi Paul Adams. The First American Constitutions. Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era. Expanded Edition. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham MD et al. 2001, ISBN 0-7425-2068-4 .
- David Halberstam (Ed.): Defining America. Leading American intellectuals explain the character of their nation (= National Geographic ). G and J / RBA, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-936559-32-5 .
- Margaret Marshall: The Importance of the Rule of Law. Lecture on July 7, 2007 at Yale Law School as an iTunes podcast .
- Tom Bingham : The Rule of Law. Penguin Allen Lane, London et al. 2010, ISBN 978-1-84614-090-7 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ only the process notes of the presiding judge, which were used for his instructions to the jury, have been handed down
- ^ Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1780)
- ↑ This dispute was led on the side of the petitioners by Theodore Sedgwick
- ↑ Records of the court in 1783, pp. 94–99.
- ^ Lex posterior derogat legi priori
- ↑ cf. today Art. 1 Para. 3 Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany
- ↑ In Germany, on this basis, the doctrine developed that only one constitutional court should be given the monopoly to reject post-constitutional law.
- ↑ Cushing, however, did not participate in this decision because of his travel activities
- ^ Justification of the US Supreme Court in the Marbury v Madison case . 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) p. 176.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Walker, Quock |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American slave who shaped the American legal development |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1753 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 18th century or 19th century |