Bayard v. Singleton

Bayard v. Singleton, North Carolina Superior Court (1787), the first reported decision overruling a law as unconstitutional. The defendant moved for dismissal of the case according to an act of the legislature that required the courts to dismiss, upon affidavit, suits against persons holding forfeited Tory (enemy alien) estates. The court overruled the motion and declared that the constitution of the state gives every man a right to a decision concerning property by jury trial.

Bibliography

Adams, Willi Paul. The First American Constitutions. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.

Lutz, Donald S. Popular Consent and Popular Control. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.

—Robert W. Winston/A. R.