Welcome to the inaugural post of “Con Law, Chronologically,” an unprecedented initiative in the study of constitutional law. It is our mission to analyze every United States Supreme Court decision, in chronological order.

We are determined to breathe life into decisions and tear down the linguistic barriers keeping the ordinary person from understanding what it is the Supreme Court is really saying, and why it matters.

You don’t need to be a lawyer or a law student to join us on this journey. We write with everybody in mind. No legal training required.

We proudly pledge NEVER to use generative artificial intelligence in the preparation of “Con Law, Chronologically.”

Welcome aboard. Let’s turn to West v. Barnes.

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This is a case in the field of civil procedure coming out of Rhode Island.

Petitioner: General William West, a Revolutionary War veteran who was struggling to pay the mortgage on his farm.

Respondent: David Barnes, the creditor and attorney who refused to accept General West’s loan payments because West paid in paper money, not in gold or silver.

This case was decided by the Jay Court, during the Washington Presidency. Ultimately, the Court ruled unanimously in favor of Barnes.

See the super short opinion here: Link to full opinion.

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To help me make sense of this case, I spoke with the great-great-great-great-great grandson (not kidding) of the first petitioner to the Supreme Court, Timothy W. Larson, Esq. Luckily for us, Larson is an attorney who practices law in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, so he has a thing or two to say about how this all shook out.

It’s like this.

General William West was a veteran of the Revolutionary War. Believe it or not, he was also a justice on what would become Rhode Island’s Supreme Court.¹ He found himself strapped with a mortgage on his farm and was struggling to make payments.² In part because he was a veteran, Rhode Island threw him a bone and let him sell some of his property via lottery.³ General West managed to raise enough money to pay his mortgage, but when he turned around and went to pay the creditors, they refused payment.⁴

Why?

Because General West was trying to pay them in paper money.

By way of background, in Rhode Island in 1785, if you had a shoelace, a pack of gum, and a stack of cash, and had to part with one of those things, you would be better off parting with the cash. Paper money was badly depreciated (as compared to gold and silver).⁵ So the creditors didn’t want cash. They wanted precious metals.

The creditors were in a bad spot, though, because Rhode Island had a law on their books stating paper money was legit, and creditors had to accept it.⁶

Ultimately, General West went through the process to pay off his debt and appropriately had the debt discharged, meaning he didn’t owe Barnes or his family squat.⁷

But the creditors refused to stand for this result. David Barnes, an attorney in the creditors’ family, sued General West in Rhode Island’s federal Circuit Court.⁸ There, his case was heard by three judges, including Chief Justice John Jay and Associate Justice William Cushing, both of the Supreme Court.⁹

What the hell were two Supreme Court Justices doing in Rhode Island at the same time they were Justices? Why weren’t they at the Supreme Court in Philadelphia?

Well, in addition to assuming their duties at the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court Justices were required to travel to lower courts to hear cases there too, up until 1911.¹⁰ The idea was, by traveling throughout the nation, the Justices would grow closer to the People and get a sense of the issues and sentiments prevailing across different communities.¹¹

The Justices hated it.¹² In the 1700s, they weren’t traveling by private jet, they were traveling by horse and carriage. These esteemed Justices were treated terribly, hauling themselves to the lower courts twice a year.¹³ This practice was called “riding the Circuit.”¹⁴

So, Chief Justice Jay and Justice Cushing were posted at that Circuit Court, and General West lost the case.¹⁵

Why would that be? Didn’t Rhode Island have a law saying creditors had to accept paper money, and didn’t General West comply?

Yes and yes. But, as it turns out, although General West complied with Rhode Island’s law to pay off his debt, the law was changed when he was in the middle of the process. That is shite luck.

Specifically, Rhode Island suspended the law General West was relying on three days after General West paid the money for the debt, before Rhode Island discharged his debt.¹⁶

Distraught at the prospect of losing his farm, General West appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States.¹⁷ He did so by filing a “writ of error.”¹⁸

A writ of error is an order that a losing party could request from a higher court to tell a lower court, “Slow your role. This party thinks you got the law wrong here, so send us the paperwork and we’re going to see if you got the law right.” Important tidbit: typically, a losing party goes to the higher court to get the writ.

Under the 1789 Judiciary Act, if a party wanted to get a writ of error to stop the lower court from executing judgment, a party had to get the writ within 10 days.¹⁹

But General West was all the way in Rhode Island. For him to drop everything and haul ass to Philadelphia, where the Supreme Court was sitting, was impractical and expensive. (By his words, “impossible.”)²⁰ Hell, Barnes, his adversary, only got sworn into the United States Supreme Court Bar the morning of oral argument after traveling 300 miles.²¹ So rather than endure the grueling journey, General West instead had Rhode Island’s Circuit Court, the same court where he just lost, sign his writ.²²

Regarding his great (x5) grandfather’s decision to refuse the mad dash apparently mandated by Congress, Larson offers, “Sailing or riding to Philadelphia and back within 10 days in 1791 would have been impractical if not impossible. West served as a Rhode Island Supreme Court justice and was undoubtedly aware of appellate procedure, so he did all he could to comply, but it was virtually impossible.”

This damned writ becomes the focus of the Supreme Court’s decision, as that writ is General West’s golden ticket into the Court. Without a writ, they can’t decide the issue about his debt.

The Arguments

When General West’s lawyer and David Barnes went before the Supreme Court, they argued as follows.

General West argued:

1. I followed all of the rules except I had somebody else sign the writ. You would’ve signed the writ had I asked you, so this is really just a technicality and you should still hear my case.²³
2. Technically, the Judiciary Act of 1789 doesn’t say I have to get the writ from you.²⁴
3. “In those [far] Districts the powers of magic would be necessary to obtain the benefits of the act: and unless the days of chivalry were to return, when a man could mount on the back of a Griffin and post through the air, the extreme parts of the Union could never enjoy them…”²⁵

In turn, Barnes argued:

1. This isn’t how a writ of error works. Everyone knows you’ve got to ask the higher court to issue it.²⁶
2. A court issuing a writ to itself is an “absurdity.”²⁷

A Preface to the Opinions…

Because this is our first case, I want to explain why we have 5 different opinions here, one from each Justice.

Today, when more than half of the Justices agree on a decision, there is one majority opinion, where one of the Justices writes for the rest of the Justices who agree with him or her.

Any other Justice who agrees with the majority decision, but for different reasons than those expressed in the majority, can write a concurring opinion, or concurrence.

And any Justice who disagrees with the ruling can write a dissenting opinion, or dissent, explaining why he or she disagrees.

BUT BACK IN THE DAY, before John Marshall became Chief Justice, the Justices would often publish their opinions “seriatim.”²⁸

*BANISH THE LATIN! What is this, Harry Potter?*

In English, seriatim means each Justice would write his own opinion explaining his own legal reasoning, even if they all agreed, as they did in West v. Barnes.

So, for some of the earlier Supreme Court decisions, we have five or six opinions to parse. (There were six Supreme Court Justices at the time.²⁹ The total number will fluctuate across history.)

Complicating things a bit more, usually U.S. Supreme Court decisions are recorded in volumes called the U.S. Reports, but for West v. Barnes, we don’t have anything in the Reports more than a few sentences summing up the Court’s collective opinion.

Thankfully, the Justices’ reasoning isn’t lost to history. We can still find their opinions in newspapers from the time.

I trekked to Seton Hall Law School’s library and physically pulled the dusty book from the shelves to dig for the opinions. (Well, my friend Alejandra kindly retrieved the book for me. That just doesn’t sound as cool.) We were in luck.

The Opinions

Justice Iredell

Justice Iredell has the most to say about this case. He acknowledges the Judiciary Act of 1789 doesn’t technically specify which court must issue the writ of error, but asserts it is “natural and obvious” it must come from the Supreme Court.³⁰ He calls the alternative result (letting a court issue a writ to itself) “absurd” and “monstrous.”³¹

Nonetheless, Justice Iredell makes clear he’s uncomfortable with denying the parties their day in court, stating, “I heartily wish it was in the power of the Court” to hear General West’s case, “but I think it is not.”³²

He points to the boundaries between the legislature, which makes the laws, and the judiciary, which interprets and applies the laws. In essence, if Congress says you have 10 days to get a proper writ, you have 10 days to get a proper writ. The Supreme Court isn’t at liberty to change the law.

He writes, “I am extremely sorry to be under the necessity of voting for a decision which may be attended with the great inconveniences pointed out: but in my opinion, the Legislature only can remedy them — It is of infinite moment that Courts of Justice should keep within their proper bounds, and construe, not amend, acts of Legislation…”³³

Justice Blair

Justice Blair’s reasoning mirrors Justice Iredell’s. He states General West’s writ is no good, writing, “…a writ not issued in the legal mode should be considered as no writ.”³⁴

Then, he tosses the mic back to the legislature and tells them to get their ducks in a row. He writes, “…this evil, whatever might be its magnitude, requires legislative correction rather than that the Court should, for the sake of avoiding it, establish an unusual, and very irregular practice.”³⁵

Justice Blair even suggests an idea to Congress as to how they can fix the problem, recommending perhaps they can make time limits proportional to where the petitioner is located in relation to the Supreme Court so those who live far away, like General West, are not disadvantaged.³⁶

Justice Wilson

Justice Wilson agrees, and openly states he wants to make sure he does not set bad precedent.³⁷

Ultimately, he warns General West is advocating for “the stream of authority inverted…”³⁸ Justice Wilson says if the time limit is really a problem for petitioners, “…it must be removed by another power. We act in the judicial, not in the legislative department.”³⁹

Justice Cushing

Justice Cushing wags his finger at General West and effectively tells him he should have gotten the writ from the Supreme Court. He writes, “…it is not our province to alter or amend [the Legislature’s] acts, but to ground our opinions upon them. If inconveniences should arise, in carrying their laws into effect, with them lies the power of correcting the inconveniences, and not with us…”⁴⁰

Chief Justice Jay

Chief Justice Jay had the least to say. He agrees with his colleagues on the record and leaves it at that.⁴¹

Though Chief Justice Jay did not communicate his concerns about the strict time-limit in his opinion, he did express them privately…to himself…in his diary.

The note is short, but telling. He wrote in his private diary, “[I]s not 10 Days too Short a time[?]”⁴²

The Decision

The Supreme Court unanimously decided that only the Supreme Court could issue a writ of error to petitioners who wished to be heard in the Supreme Court.⁴³

So, the Court did not hear General West’s underlying case because he did not do the paperwork right.

What became of him?

According to Larson, his great-great-great-great-great grandfather “…lost his farm and ended up quite impoverished and largely forgotten despite his role as a general in the Revolution, judge and anti-federalist politician. The only biography of him from over 100 years ago, doesn’t even mention his role in the first Supreme Court decision. He sold the Rhode Island farm from which the controversy arose to his sons-in-law…but the litigation continued for years…”

Final Reflections

What do I think?

We often think of the Supreme Court as the Justice League, a group of betters who are empowered to step in to right the wrong, using their unimpeachable senses of justice to guide their decisions and reach the right result. We certainly hold our Justices in high regard, and I think we should.

But something we ought to remember is the Supreme Court, being an institution of law, is tasked with making decisions according to law. The Justices remind us of this responsibility throughout their opinions.

Although the Justices may have privately wished for the law to be written differently, they opted to stay in their judicial lane. They interpreted the law, and they deferred to Congress to write a better law.

If there is an injustice here, and I do think there is, the injustice lies with Congress, not with the Court. So I agree with their decision from a legal perspective.

*What’s the big deal if the Supreme Court steps in to correct a law that’s clearly bad? Isn’t a court supposed to promote justice?*

Well, the framework of the United States government delegates certain powers to the Legislative branch, certain powers to the Executive, and certain powers to the Judiciary. Each is supposed to stay in her lane. There exists a common concern about any one branch growing too powerful.

Dissatisfied? You’re not alone. The balance and tension of power between the branches is precisely the subject of so many of our Supreme Court’s decisions.

Turning to the case at hand, although the procedural rules in play did not explicitly prohibit a lower court from issuing a writ, what General West did, going to the Rhode Island Circuit Court for a writ of error pertaining to their own decision, didn’t exactly make legal sense, considering a writ is conventionally an order from the higher court telling the lower to pause and send their documents upstairs, so to speak. I agree with Barnes that this was a legal “absurdity”.

Moreover, practically, I think it would be outrageous to expect the Court to give flexibility on a hard rule of civil procedure for its first decision. The Constitution was new (ratified in 1788)⁴⁴, the law in dispute was new (only just enacted in 1789)⁴⁵, and the Court itself was brand-spanking-new (first convening in February of 1790)⁴⁶. I don’t think the Court had the latitude or the gall to deviate from the law in their first decision.

Nonetheless, I think the Court correctly identified there was an issue with Congress’s law. After the decision, Justice Iredell wrote to President Washington urging him to push for a change in the rules so petitioners far from the Court had a fair shot.⁴⁷

In his private letter, Justice Iredell revealed he and his fellow Justices thought the rule was bad, but ruled in Barnes’ favor because they felt “it was their duty to administer the law as it was, regardless of its policy or consequences.”⁴⁸

Justice Iredell wrote Washington, in pertinent part:

“…The Court…thought that [West v. Barnes] was so extraordinary a case, the unequal condition of the Parties was so glaring, the intention of the Legislature if it could have been expressed must have been so utterly contrary to any design of making an injurious discrimination between Citizens of the same Government is a point where no locality as to right could at all come in competition with the equal principles of impartial Justice…to prevent any immediate injury by ordering a continuance of all such causes on which the evil I have stated could arise…”⁴⁹

And ultimately, the rule was changed via the Process and Compensation act of 1792.⁵⁰ 

While I think the Court wisely heeded its role as the judiciary, an institution of laws, I do lament General West’s loss.

Reflections From Larson

I asked Larson if he thought the Court got it right. He told me, “Yes, from a textualist perspective, but that’s a question of judicial philosophy. The justices’ seriatim decisions, especially Justice Iredell’s, showed a textualist judicial restraint in strictly deferring to Congress’ text in the Judiciary Act (and not Congress’ ‘intention’) regarding the 10 day writ timeline and avoided trying to ‘encroach on legislative authority…’

“At the same time, the justices recognized the injustice done to West and others who lived too far from the Supreme Court to obtain a writ within the required statutory time frame…

“Like Iredell I am sympathetic to West and the injustice done to him, but I understand the justices’ legal reasoning and caution especially in ruling from such a new court, and supporting the need for ‘certainty’ and not ‘fiction’ in interpreting early laws…

“The justices also may have wanted to avoid ruling on the contentious monetary issue and been looking for a procedural escape hatch to avoid potentially exercising judicial review and further controversy impacting the early U.S government…

“This is not unlike when the court today tries to avoid controversial precedent on procedural grounds.  Justice Iredell recognized ‘difficulty…increased when an entire new system was to be created.’”

Bearing in mind the Court’s decision in West v. Barnes, Larson offers this word of warning to practicing attorneys: “I’ve seen judges extend time periods for filing or discovery many times, but obviously you can’t rely on this. Most judges and lawyers agree to extensions and respect procedural due process and fairness for parties. Nevertheless, sticking to the text and rules is the safest course unless there is supportive precedent. You can’t expect a judge to Lochnerize every time. Sometimes a court is looking for a reason not to deal with your case if possible, possibly due to high caseloads, but especially if it could theoretically threaten the republic.”

Why I’m Fired Up

In the end, Congress’s lack of foresight arguably cost a veteran his farm. He went to debtors’ prison, and he died poor.⁵¹ General West had his debts, and his debts were his responsibility, but an avenue to relief was closed to him because of a poorly conceived procedural rule of Congress. If you think this stuff (the law) doesn’t matter, think again.

West v. Barnes, I think, exemplifies what I’m aiming to accomplish with “Con Law, Chronologically.” I am admittedly incensed that legal scholars wave this case away like it’s nothing, and write love songs to others, calling some cases “landmarks” and dismissing this one as not even a footnote in our nation’s constitutional history.

That a veteran lost his farm in part due to the Congress’s poor lawmaking is not something to be shrugged off. And from a broader constitutional perspective, West v. Barnes stands on its own two legs. As Larson puts it, “The judicial philosophies in West v. Barnes are very much alive in the Supreme Court today.”

We ought to pay attention.

You Be The Judge

Have more to say? Leave a comment!

Click here to read Timothy W. Larson’s incredibly informative article on West v. Barnes.

Studying this case for class? I offer 1-on-1, virtual law school tutoring. Learn more here.

Here’s a Bluebook cite for ya – Johnathan J. Azar, I Talked to a Descendant of the Supreme Court’s First Petitioner: West v. Barnes (1791) (Feb. 10, 2026) 

FOOTNOTES

1. Maeva Marcus & James R. Perry eds., The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789–1800, vol. 6, at 9 n.13 (Columbia Univ. Press 1998). ↩︎
2. Id. at 7 ↩︎
3. Id. ↩︎
4. Id. ↩︎
5. Paper Money: The Debtors’ Panacea or an Instrument of Fraud, Ctr. for the Study of the Am. Const. (Feb. 7, 2023), https://csac.history.wisc.edu/2023/02/07/paper-money-the-debtors-panacea-or-an-instrument-of-fraud/. ↩︎
6. Documentary History, vol. 6, at 7. ↩︎
7. Id. at 8 ↩︎
8. Id. ↩︎
9. Id. at 9 ↩︎
10. Riding the Circuit, Civics, Supreme Court Historical Society, https://civics.supremecourthistory.org/article/riding-the-circuit/ (last visited February 10, 2026). ↩︎
11. Id. ↩︎
12. Id. ↩︎
13. Id. ↩︎
14. Id. ↩︎
15. Documentary History, vol. 6, at 9. ↩︎
16. Id. at 11 ↩︎
17. Id. ↩︎
18. Id. ↩︎
19.  An Act to Establish the Judicial Courts of the United States (Judiciary Act of Sept. 24, 1789), Avalon Project, Yale Law Sch. Lillian Goldman Law Libr., https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/judiciary_act.asp (last visited Feb. 10, 2026). ↩︎
20. Documentary History, vol. 6, at 12. ↩︎
21. Id. at 9 ↩︎
22. Id. ↩︎
23. Id. at 10 ↩︎
24. Id. ↩︎
25. Id. at 17 ↩︎
26. Id. at 9 ↩︎
27. Id. at 10 ↩︎
28. The Practice of Dissent in the Early Court, Civics, Supreme Court Historical Society, https://civics.supremecourthistory.org/article/the-practice-of-dissent-in-the-early-court/ (last visited Feb. 10, 2026). ↩︎
29. Supreme Court Historical Society, The Jay Court, 1789–1795, Supreme Court History, https://supremecourthistory.org/history-of-the-courts/jay-court-1789-1795/ (last visited Feb. 10, 2026). ↩︎
30. Id. at 19 ↩︎
31. Id. ↩︎
32. Id. at 20 ↩︎
33. Id. at 22 ↩︎
34. Id. at 23 ↩︎
35. Id. ↩︎
36. Id. ↩︎
37. Id. ↩︎
38. Id. at 24 ↩︎
39. Id. at 25 ↩︎
40. Id. at 26 ↩︎
41. Id. ↩︎
42. Id. at 13 ↩︎
43. West v. Barnes, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 401 (1791). ↩︎
44. The Day the Constitution Was Ratified, Constitution Daily Blog, National Constitution Center, Sep. 17, 2022, https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-day-the-constitution-was-ratified (last visited Feb. 10, 2026). ↩︎
45.  An Act to Establish the Judicial Courts of the United States (Judiciary Act of Sept. 24, 1789), Avalon Project, Yale Law Sch. Lillian Goldman Law Libr., https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/judiciary_act.asp (last visited Feb. 10, 2026). ↩︎
46. Meeting and Visiting the Supreme Court, U.S. Sup. Ct., https://www.supremecourt.gov/visiting/activities/meetingsites.aspx (last visited Feb. 10, 2026). ↩︎
47. James Iredell to George Washington, 23 Feb. 1792, Founders Online, National Archives,
    https://founders.archives.gov/?q=james%20iredell%20Author%3A%22Iredell%2C%20James%22&s=1111311111&r=6&sr= (last visited Feb. 10, 2026). ↩︎
48. Id. ↩︎
49. Id. ↩︎
50. Act of Apr. 2, 1792, ch. 36, 1 Stat. 246. ↩︎
51. George M. West, William West of Scituate, R.I., Farmer, Soldier, Statesman 23 (Panama City Publishing Co. 1919) (digitized at Archive.org), https://archive.org/details/williamwestofsci00west/page/23/mode/1up. ↩︎

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