View the H-Law Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-Law's November 2008 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-Law's November 2008 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-Law home page.
While I have never done any organized research on this topic, reading English cases from the eighteenth century has led me to the conclusion that dissents, in the sense we know them today, were very rare in that era. Chief Justice John Marshall is credited with inventing the idea of an opinion by the Court, as opposed to opinions issued by various judges expressing their view of the issues, as the Law Lords did in England. Marshall's innovation made it easier for lawyers and lower courts to know how a decision shaped the law and also, of course, made dissents possible (though dissents continued to be rare in the early nineteenth century). Thus, the 1789 Congress would not have worried, I think, about ties. George Thomas, Rutgers Law, Newark
|