The Fletcher vs. Peck trial was a landmark, as it was one of the first cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared a state law unconstitutional. After the Treaty of Paris, Georgia laid claim to 35 million acres of land known as the Yazoo lands, also home to an Indian reserve. Georgia then divided this land into 4 regions and sold it for $500,000, or about 1.4 cents per acre. This move became known as the Yazoo Land Act of 1795 However, it was soon revealed that all but one of the Georgian legislatures had been bribed by the land speculators. This made the voting public very angry, and most of the legislatures were not reelected at the election. The new legislature that was elected quickly repealed the law and nullified its transactions in 1796, to the large public outcry. That’s where Robert Fletcher and John Peck come in. John Peck has purchased some of the land that was a part of the land act in 1800. In 1803, Peck sold 15,000 acres of that for $3,000 to Robert Fletcher. Shortly after, Fletcher discovered the Yazoo Land Act of 1795 and that his transaction was technically voided by the state law, and claimed Peck had lied to him in promising he had good title to the land. Fletcher sued Peck, partly to establish the constitutionality of the 1796 nullification. So, the question raised before the court was whether the act of 1796 had violated Article 1, Section 10 of the constitution, either legally allow it to constitutionally repeal that sale, or whether the Constitution prohibited it from doing so.
The constitutional issued presented was that whether a law that negates all property rights established under an earlier law unconstitutional?
In a 4-1 vote written by John Marshall, the Supreme Court ruled that Georgia had violated the Contract Clause of the Constitution when it repealed the grants of the Yazoo Land Act of 1795 The Court reasoned that the