Connecticut Supreme Court History
Volume I (2006)

SYMSBURY CASE

Abstract

Symsbury Case (1785) is among the first reported cases in the country to record the apparent exercise of judicial review. Published in the earliest of Connecticut’s judicial decision reporters, it today remains a case of interest and importance for legal advocates and scholars, both in Connecticut and nationally. Symsbury, in essential terms, involved a dispute over property boundaries, which developed as a result of sequential, competing land grants by the General Assembly. The Superior Court resolved the matter by declining to enforce subsequent acts of the General Assembly about land that interfered with an earlier grant regarding the same land: “The act of the General Assembly ... could not legally operate to curtail the land before granted to the proprietors of the town of Symsbury, without their consent.” Symsbury operated, therefore, as a judicial declaration that a legislative act was invalid. Judicial review in Connecticut was born . . . maybe.

The brief but powerful holding from Symsbury would, in time, ensure that the case received recognition as an important element in the establishment of the American practice of judicial review. Today, many historically based studies of the practice include a reference to, if not a full discussion of, the case. In the course of the recent bicentennial recognition of the United States Supreme Court decision of Marbury v. Madison (1803), constitutional law scholars highlighted Symsbury and other state-level examples of judicial review that pre-existed Chief Justice John Marshall’s declaration of this power for the federal courts.

This essay regarding Symsbury Case begins with a description of the case and the institutional context within which it was decided. This description will also illuminate the role of the state’s Supreme Court of Errors as authority for the Superior Court’s decision, because Symsbury appears to represent a Supreme Court of Errors precedent, as well. In turn, the role of the Supreme Court of Errors, as then constituted, raises an issue of the meaning of “judicial review” when applied to 1780s’ Connecticut. This essay then considers the historical treatment of the decision. There was in fact little attention to Symsbury until very late in the 1800s, when the increasing prevalence of judicial review across the country led to consideration of early precedents for the practice. Accordingly, Symsbury did not directly affect the practice of judicial review in nineteenth-century Connecticut, despite its importance as the earliest state example of this extraordinary court activity. This essay ends with an assessment of the meaning that we give Symsbury today. As with most historical inquiries into important developments of governmental institutions and practices, this essay invites more study of this decision and its place in Connecticut Supreme Court history.
 

Connecticut Supreme Court History, Vol. I | Publications