Hayburn's Case, 2 Dall. (2 U.S.) 409 (1792). Hayburn's Case was an early and ambiguous precedent that raised issues of judicial review and justiciability. In 1792, Congress enacted legislation that required the United States Circuit Courts to hear disability pension claims by veterans of the War for Independence and to certify their findings to the secretary of war. Five of the then‐six justices of the Supreme Court (Jay, Cushing, Wilson, Blair, and Iredell), sitting as judges of the three circuit courts, tendered opinions in the form of letters to President George Washington declining to serve in that capacity. All agreed that the statute imposed nonjudicial duties on the courts and thus violated the principle of separation of powers. All objected to the implied power of the secretary of war (an officer of the executive branch) to revise or to refuse to honor the courts' reports. Two of the letters objected to Congress's power to decline to make appropriations to support the courts' findings. Congress in the next session revised the claims procedure to obviate the constitutional difficulties. Despite its ambiguities Hayburn's case is regarded as an early assertion of the power of federal courts to hold statutes enacted by Congress unconstitutional and to refuse to enforce them. The case also anticipated problems of justiciability because of its concern for the finality of judicial determinations.

See also Judicial Power and Jurisdiction.

William M. Wiecek

HAYBURN'S CASE

HAYBURN'S CASE, 2 Dallas 409 (1792), refers to one of the earliest assertions of the independence of the American judiciary, and one of the first instances of federal judicial review. A 1791 federal statute granting pensions to Revolutionary War veterans mandated that the U.S. circuit courts determine whether petitioners qualified. The act gave the secretary of war the power to deny pensions if he believed the courts to be in error. Circuit judges protested that the act, in giving an executive official power to overrule a judicial determination, violated the Constitution's principle of separation of powers. The appeal lodged before the Supreme Court of circuit judges' refusal to act was rendered moot when a new statutory pension plan did not involve judges.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Casto, William R. The Supreme Court in the Early Republic: The Chief Justiceships of John Jay and Oliver Ellsworth. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995.

Stephen B.Presser

See alsoJudicial Review .