Calder v. Bull: Natural Justice in an Early American Court

The natural law–positivism debate appeared in the United States Supreme Court as early as 1798. In Calder v. Bull, the Court considered whether Connecticut's legislature could set aside a probate court decision about an inheritance, and ruled that the Constitution's ban on ex post facto laws applied only to criminal punishments, so the state's act stood.

The case is remembered for two contrasting opinions. Justice Samuel Chase wrote that an act of the legislature 'contrary to the great first principles of the social compact' cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority, giving examples such as a law taking property from A and giving it to B.

Justice James Iredell disagreed, warning that 'the ideas of natural justice are regulated by no fixed standard', since 'the ablest and the purest men have differed upon the subject'. Courts, he argued, should strike down laws only when they violate the written constitution. The exchange set the terms of a debate about judicial reasoning that has never ended.