Early Washington’s legal disputes, as its chief judge reported them

In the first decades of the national capital, the federal Circuit Court for the District of Columbia heard the city’s quarrels and crimes, and William Cranch, its chief judge, who lived from 1769 to 1855, reported its decisions. Read now, these volumes show how life in early Washington came before the court: commercial disputes, criminal prosecutions, and petitions from enslaved people asking for their freedom.

The freedom suits give the books a life beyond the law library. Cases reported here, among them Sylvia v. Coryell and Mima Queen v. Hepburn, are studied today by the Early Washington, D.C., Law & Family digital history project. These are not Cranch’s earlier reports of the United States Supreme Court, which are a separate work.

Here are Volume I, covering 1801 to 1810, and Volume II, covering 1810 to 1826, both dated 1852: the opening two of a six-volume series. They come from the Mahoning Law Library Association, whose stamps are on the endpapers and page edges, and appear to have been rebound later in tan library cloth. The covers are dusty, toned and worn at the spines, with foxing heaviest on the title pages; the boards are attached, but the contents of each volume have not been collated.