Legal Tender Cases
LEGAL TENDER CASES
LEGAL TENDER CASES involved the question of the constitutionality of the measures enacted by the U.S. Congress during the Civil War for the issue of treasury notes to circulate as money without provision for redemption. The constitutional question hinged not on the power of the government to issue the notes, but on its power to make them legal tender for the payment of debts, particularly debts contracted before the legislation. The Supreme Court first ruled on the question on 7 February 1870 in the case of Hepburn v. Griswold (8 Wallace 603). The majority held that Congress had no power to enact the legal-tender provisions. The vote of the Court members was five to three, with the obvious senility of Justice Robert C. Grier, one of the majority, casting doubt on the weight of his opinion. He retired before the Court announced the decision, which left the alignment four to three. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, who, as the secretary of the Treasury had shared responsibility for the original enactments, wrote the opinion against the constitutionality of the legislation.
Nominations of two new members of the Supreme Court arrived in the Senate on the day on which the Court announced the decision. At the ensuing term, the Court heard the reargument of the constitutional question in another case. On 1 May 1871, the Court reversed the Hepburn decision in Knox v. Lee and Parker v. Davis (12 Wallace 457). The question of whether President Ulysses S. Grant deliberately packed the Court to bring about a reversal of the original decision is still a matter of debate.
The Treasury withdrew some of the notes but reissued others under a later statute enacted without reference to wartime conditions. The Supreme Court upheld this statute on 3 March 1884, in Juilliard v. Greenman.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dunne, Gerald T. Monetary Decisions of the Supreme Court. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1960.
Kutler, Stanley I. Judicial Power and Reconstruction Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.
Niven, John. Salmon P. Chase: A Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Schwartz, Bernard. A History of the Supreme Court. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Carl BrentSwisher/a. e.