Ex Parte Garland

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EX PARTE GARLAND,

EX PARTE GARLAND, 4 Wallace 333 (1867). In December 1860, Augustus Hill Garland, who later served as an Arkansas senator in the Confederate congress, was admitted to the federal bar. Following the Civil War, Congress enacted a new ironclad oath requiring attorneys to swear that they had neither voluntarily borne arms against the United States nor held office under a hostile government. President Andrew Johnson pardoned Garland, who then petitioned the Supreme Court to readmit him to the federal bar without taking the new oath. In Ex Parte Garland, a 5 to 4 Court majority held that the oath constituted both a bill of attainder and an ex post facto law, violating the U.S. Constitution in either instance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fairman, Charles. Reconstruction and Reunion, 1864–88. Vol. 1. New York: Macmillan, 1987.

R. VolneyRiser

David Y.Thomas

See alsoCummings v. Missouri ; Reconstruction .