Yazoo: Law and Politics in the New Republic: The case of Fletcher v. Peck [Paperback]

C. Peter Magrath (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 258 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (September 1, 1967)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039300418X
• ISBN-13: 978-0393004182
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,098,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Establishing the sanctity of contracts and private property in U.S. law, February 21, 2011

By 

David M. Freedman (Chicago area) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Yazoo: Law and Politics in the New Republic: The case of Fletcher v. Peck (Paperback)

The landmark case of Fletcher v. Peck (1810) stems from the massive land-grab scandal in Georgia's Yazoo territory (now Alabama and Mississippi) beginning in 1795.

The facts of the case cover 15 years and are fairly complicated. Magrath's convoluted telling of it makes the already complex story a bit hard to follow. But his political and legal analysis is superb, and overall it is a very good book: fair, comprehensive, and sophisticated in its interpretation of (a) the political climate in the early republic, involving the Federalist and Republican parties; (b) legislation in both Georgia and the U.S. Congress surrounding the prickly Yazoo issues; and (c) the 1810 Supreme Court decision in Fletcher v. Peck (when John Marshall was chief justice), which fortified the contract clause of the Constitution and established the doctrine of vested property rights.

Found in Article 1, Section 10, the contract clause prohibits the states from passing any law "impairing the obligations of contracts."

Magrath was a political science professor at Brown University when he wrote this book in 1966.