Opinion ID: 2381895
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Mandamus and Prohibition in Provincial Maryland

Text: The 17th century, of course, brings us to the Province of Maryland and affords us an opportunity to glance at relevant aspects of our pre-revolutionary governmental structure. In that period judge-made common law prevailed to some degree in Maryland, subject to such Provincial legislation as was enacted, and to pertinent acts of Parliament. In those early days, arrangements were not unlike those in medieval England. The Governor sat with his Council and this body performed administrative, legislative, and judicial functions. C. Bond, The Court of Appeals of Maryland 1-3 (1928) (hereinafter Bond). [2] By 1638, the Governor and Council were sitting as a county court, which by 1642 was designated the Provincial Court. Id. at 3-4. After the division of the legislature into upper and lower houses in 1649, the upper house (the Governor and Council) exercised the highest appellate authority in the province. Id. at 3. But the Provincial Court became the chief court of the province, regarded as the local equivalent of the Court of King's Bench. Id. at 4. Like King's Bench, it exercised both original and appellate jurisdiction. Id. Pre-revolutionary sources show that the Provincial Court as well as the Court of Appeals issued the extraordinary writ of mandamus on occasion. [3] See Bordley v. Lloyd, 1 H. & McH. 27 (Prov.Ct., June Term 1709); Mitchells Adrs. v. Majsty (1715) reported in C. Bond, Proceedings of the Maryland Court of Appeals 1695-1729, 196-197 (1933). But the cases themselves fail to discuss the source of the power to issue these prerogative writs. Post-revolutionary authorities, however, assert that the Provincial Court possessed the supervisory or superintending power of the Court of King's Bench. In Kendall v. United States, 12 Pet. 524, 9 L.Ed. 1181 (1838), for reasons not important here, it became necessary to decide whether the federal Circuit Court for the District of Columbia had the power to issue a writ of mandamus. Important to that determination was the question of whether Maryland courts had common law power to issue the writ in 1801. Both the majority opinion of Justice Thompson, id. at 621, 9 L.Ed. at 1219, and the dissenting opinion of Chief Justice Taney, id. at 631-632, 9 L.Ed. at 1223-1224, concluded that the Maryland General Court had that power. The General Court was the successor of the pre-revolutionary Provincial Court. See, Md. Const. of 1776, § 56; and see Bond, supra, at 58. What Chief Justice Taney had to say is instructive. After discussing the power of King's Bench to issue prerogative writs as an incident to its superintending power, Taney asserted that the Provincial Court possessed this power because its jurisdiction was co-extensive with the dominions of the lord proprietary and because the Provincial Court was to Maryland what King's Bench was to England at common law. Kendall, 12 Pet. at 630-632, 9 L.Ed. at 1223-1224. In Taney's view this power passed to the General Court in 1776. Id. And this view is supported by Runkel v. Winemiller, 4 H. & McH. 429 (Gen.Ct.Oct. Term 1799). At issue in that case was whether the Reverend Mr. Runkel was entitled to a writ of mandamus to oust William Schneyder, who had allegedly usurped Runkel's position as the lawfully installed minister of the German or High Dutch Reformed Christian Church at Frederick Town. Id. at 430-431. The General Court held it had the power to issue the writ. It explained: The Court of King's Bench having a superintending power over inferior Courts of jurisdictions, may and of right ought, to interfere to supply a remedy when the ordinary forms of proceedings are inadequate to the attainment of justice in matters of public concern.... The position that this Court is invested with similar powers is generally admitted, and the decisions have invariably conformed to it; and whence the inference is plainly deducible, that this Court may, and of right ought, for the sake of justice, to interpose in a summary way to supply a remedy where, for the want of a specific one, there would otherwise be a failure of justice. Id. at 449 [citation omitted; emphasis supplied]. As we have seen the General Court was the successor to the Provincial Court; this, then, amounts to a statement that the Provincial Court had the superintending power and consequently the power to issue prerogative writs. [4] It also was Chief Justice Taney's view that the Provincial Court possessed the supervisory or superintending power of King's Bench. Kendall v. United States, supra, 12 Pet. at 629, 9 L.Ed. at 1222-1223. If that is so, has that power, or any part of it, passed to this Court, and if so, by what means? If not, is there some other basis for our issuance of writs such as mandamus and prohibition?