Georgia v. Brailsford Maeva Marcus More than fifty years after the case of Geor gia v. Brailsford was decided in the Supreme Court, Justice Benjamin R. Curtis had occasion to refer to it in an opinion he wrote on circuit. He discussed Chief Justice John Jay’s charge to the trial jury as reported by Alexander J. Dallas, the unofficial reporter of Supreme Court decisions during its first decade.1 Dallas recorded that Jay had instructed the jury that “both law and fact are lawfully within their power ofdecision.” In a tone ofwonderment, Curtis confessed: “I cannot help feeling much doubt respecting the accuracy ofthis report. ... I can scarcely believe that the [Cjhief [Jjustice held the opinion that, in civil cases, and this was a civil case, the jury had the right to decide the law.” “Indeed,” the Justice con tinued, the whole case is an anomaly. It pur ports to be a trial by jury, in the su preme court of the United States, of certain issues out of chancery. And the [Cjhief [Jjustice begins by telling the jury that the facts are all agreed, and the only question is a matter of law, and upon that the whole court were agreed. If it be correctly reported, I can only say, it is not in accordance with the views of any other court, so far as I know, in this country or in England, and is certainly not in accordance with the course of the supreme court for many years.2 But Justice Curtis would have been surprised ifhe had investigated further, for he would have found that the elements ofBrailsfordthat he had questioned were indeed reported correctlyby Dal las. Over the course of two years, 1792-1794, the case of Georgia v. Brailsfordhad offered the Justices the opportunity to explore for the first time the relation between the law and equity sides of the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction. Begun in the United States Circuit Court for the district of Georgia, a simple suit between individuals for recovery of a debt turned into a more difficult case involving a state and eventually led to the firstjury trial to be held in the Supreme Court of the United States.3 Justice James Iredell, who pre sided at the fall 1791 session of the circuit court in Georgia, realizedthattheBrailsfordcase would have to be treated in a novel manner, because, it 58 GEORGIA y. BRAILSFORD seemed to him, neither federal statutes nor the common law adequately provided for all the par ties with a claim to the debt to be represented in court. In outlining the case in a letter to President George Washington, he explained, I have been thus particular in stating this interesting subject, because it appears to me of the highest moment, although I believe it would be difficult to devise an unexceptionable remedy. But the discussion of questions wherein are involved the most sacred and awful principles of public justice, under a system without precedent in the history of Mankind, necessarily must occasion many embarrassments which can be much more readily sug gested than removed.4 From the founding of the Republic, repay ment of debts owing to British creditors prom ised to be a ticklish problem, particularly in the South. Because Article 4 ofthe Definitive Treaty of Peace (1783) provided that no “lawful” im pediments be placed in the way of recovery of existing debts,5 repayment became a public as well as a private issue and pitted the interests of the federal government against those ofthe states. Federal courts served as the only mechanism for enforcing Article 4, and they were available only to British creditors who could meet the jurisdic tional amount-in-controversy requirement.6 Al thoughVirginia was the state whose citizens were most heavily burdened by British debts and thus most likely to furnish the prototype debt case,7 the Brailsford suit from Georgia reached the Supreme Court first and became the vehicle for the earliest pronouncements by that Court on the debt question.8 Georgia v. Brailsford grew out of a private suit instituted by Samuel Brailsford, for himself as well as his fellow merchants Robert William Powell and John Hopton, against...