In 1874, the U.S. government created the United States Reports, and retroactively numbered older privately-published case reports as part of the new series. As a result, cases appearing in volumes 1–90 of U.S. Reports have dual citation forms; one for the volume number of U.S. Reports, and one for the volume number of the reports named for the relevant reporter of decisions (these are called "nominative reports").
John William Wallace
Starting with the 66th volume of U.S. Reports, the Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States was John William Wallace. Wallace was Reporter of Decisions from 1863 to 1874, covering volumes 68 through 90 of United States Reports which correspond to volumes 1 through 23 of his Wallace's Reports. As such, the dual form of citation to, for example, Thompson v. Bowie is 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 463 (1867).
Wallace's Reports were the final nominative reports for the US Supreme Court; starting with volume 91, cases were identified simply as "(volume #) U.S. (page #) (year)".
Justices of the Supreme Court at the time of 71 U.S. (4 Wall.)
The Supreme Court is established by Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States, which says: "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court . . .". The size of the Court is not specified; the Constitution leaves it to Congress to set the number of justices. Under the Judiciary Act of 1789 Congress originally fixed the number of justices at six (one chief justice and five associate justices).[2] Since 1789 Congress has varied the size of the Court from six to seven, nine, ten, and back to nine justices (always including one chief justice).
When the cases in 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) were decided the following nine justices were members of the Court:
Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 2 (1866), is a Supreme Court decision that ruled unconstitutional the application of military tribunals to citizens when civilian courts are still operating. The Court held that "martial rule can never exist when the courts are open", and confined martial law to areas of "military operations, where war really prevails" and when it was a necessity to provide a substitute for a civil authority that had been overthrown.
Ex parte Garland
Ex parte Garland, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 333 (1866), is an important case involving the disbarment of former Confederate officials. The Supreme Court ruled that a statute prohibiting former Confederate government officials from serving in the US government was unconstitutional as being both a bill of attainder and an ex post facto law. The Court also held that lawyers are officers of the court, not officers of the United States, and that their removal must be an exercise of judicial power, not legislative power.
Under the Judiciary Act of 1789 the federal court structure at the time comprised District Courts, which had general trial jurisdiction; Circuit Courts, which had mixed trial and appellate (from the US District Courts) jurisdiction; and the United States Supreme Court, which had appellate jurisdiction over the federal District and Circuit courts—and for certain issues over state courts. The Supreme Court also had limited original jurisdiction (i.e., in which cases could be filed directly with the Supreme Court without first having been heard by a lower federal or state court). There were one or more federal District Courts and/or Circuit Courts in each state, territory, or other geographical region.
Bluebook citation style is used for case names, citations, and jurisdictions.
"C.C.D." = United States Circuit Court for the District of . . .
e.g.,"C.C.D.N.J." = United States Circuit Court for the District of New Jersey
"D." = United States District Court for the District of . . .
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