Ogden v. Witherspoon (Blackledge)

Ogden v. Witherspoon (Blackledge) was heard before circuit justice John Marshall and resident district judge Henry Potter in 1802. The judges sharply disagreed about the meaning of several eighteenth-century statutes affecting creditors' rights asserted in this case by British citizens seeking payment of debts contracted by North Carolinians prior to the American Revolution. Potter, in an opaque opinion, interpreted the ambiguous statutes as favorable to the local debtors, whereas Marshall construed them in light of the 1783 peace treaty with Great Britain barring impediments to debt recovery by British creditors. He denied that the statute of limitations had taken effect and concluded that the state had retrospectively impaired vested property rights protected by Article I, section 10, of the U.S. Constitution. The judges' disagreement resulted in certification of the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, the first case of its kind argued in that forum. The Supreme Court affirmed Marshall's decision, but on statutory grounds alone.