embolden the States and their Courts to make many claims of power, which, otherwise they would not have thought of."[1] Nevertheless, another equally strong Federalist, Edmund Randolph, the Attorney-General, took the opposite view, and in a letter to President Washington expressed the hope that the Judges would continue even firmer in denouncing infractions of the Constitution:
It is much to be regretted that the Judiciary in spite of their apparent firmness in annulling the pension law are not, what sometime hence they will be, a resource against the infractions of the Constitution on the one hand, and a steady asserter of the Federal rights on the other. So crude is our Judiciary system, so jealous are State Judges of their authority, so ambiguous is the language of the Constitution that the most probable quarter from which an alarming discontent may proceed is the rivalship of these two orders of Judges. … Many severe experiments, the result of which upon the public mind cannot be foreseen, await the Judiciary; States are brought into Courts as defendants to the claims of land companies and of individuals; British debts rankle deep in the hearts of one part of the United States; and the precedent fixed by the condemnation of the pension law, if not reduced to its precise principles, may justify every constable in thwarting our laws.
In order to obtain a decision from the full Court, reducing its views to "precise principles", Randolph, acting officially as Attorney-General, filed a motion for a mandamus to the Circuit Court in Pennsylvania to command them to proceed on the petition of the invalid pensioner, Hayburn. The case was reported in Dallas Reports very briefly, but the contemporary newspapers give a far more complete account of this earliest of American constitutional cases, and describe it as follows:[2]
