"RY CE 57427 JUDGES OF THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW-YORK, DURING THE YEAR 1806. JAMES KENT, Esq., Chief Justice. AMBROSE SPENCER, Esq. DANIEL D. TOMPKINS, Esq Attorney General. JOHN WOODWORTH, Esq. DISTRICT OF NEW-YORK, ss. BE IT REMEMBERED, That on the seventeenth day of January, in the thirty-first year of the Independence of the United States of America, WILLIAM JOHNSON, of the said district, hath deposited in this office the title of a book, the right whereof he claims as author, in the words and figures following, to wi! "Reports of Cases argued and determined in the Supreme Court of Judicature, and in the Court for the Trial of Impeachments and the Correction of Errors, in the State of New-York. By William John son, Counsellor at Law. Vol. I. Second edition, corrected, with additional references." In conformity to the act of the Congress of the United States, entitled, "An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned;" and also to an act, entitled, "An Act supplementary to an act, entitled, An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned, and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints." EDWARD DUNSCOMB, Clerk of the District of New-York. PREFACE. A KNOWLEDGE of the unwritten or common law is principally obtained from the decisions of courts of justice, established to expound and declare the law of the land. It is only by accurate histories of these decisions, in which are preserved the principles and reasons of every adjudication, that we can obtain any satisfactory or authoritative evidence of the rules and maxims by which our conduct is to be directed, in the various relations of social life, and in the infinitely diversified transactions of civil society. The necessity of such histories of judicial determinations was very early felt, and their utility has been proved by long experience, in that country from which we derive so large a portion of our jurisprudence. It is now more than five hundred years since Reports were first published in England, and the numerous volumes in which they are contained constitute the most instructive part of the lawyer's library. If works of this nature have been found so indispensable in that country, they are far more necessary in our own, where new questions every day arise, in the decision of which, English adjudications cannot always afford a certain guide. By the thirty-fifth section of the constitution of this state, it is declared, "that such parts of the common law of England, and of the statute law of England and Great Britain, and of the acts of the legislature of the colony of New-York, as together formed the law of the colony on the 19th April, 1775, should be and continue the law of this state, subject to such alterations and provisions as the legislature should, from time to time, make, concerning the same "" and that all such parts of the English common law or statutes, as related to a church establishment, or the sovereignty of Great Britain over the colony, or which were repugnant to the constitution, should be abrogated. The decisions of English courts, therefore, since the period fixed by the constitution, though entitled to the highest respect, are no longer considered as authoritative precedents. Many parts, too, of the English law, which were found inapplicable to our situation, as a sovereign and independent state, or incompatible with the principles of the form of government which we adopted, have been altered or repealed, by different acts of the legislature. Though the English Reports, published since the revolution. |