chapter V

1805 TO 1851
procedure and change

URING this first half of the century the
court continued far behind in its business.
The cases on the docket at the opening of
the June Term, 1806, numbered three hundred and
two;¹ and the variations in the figures before 1851
were not great. There was a feeling at the time
that the judges were crowded with their duties.
McHenry) in the preface to his work on Eject-
ment,² said:

The judges of the Court of Appeals, being itinerant, have
little time to pause. One Court treads on the heels of another.
The business of one county is hurried over that the judges may
hasten to the other counties of the district. From the districts,
the chief judges repair to the Court of Appeals, in which court
many cases lie undecided that the judges may hasten back to
their districts.

But the records of days actually spent by the
judges on their various benches are difficult to
reconcile with this explanation. In 1809 the As-
sembly passed an act, chapter 181, to promote the
speedy administration of justice by the punctual
and regular discharge by the judges of their im-
portant official duties, in which it required that
the court clerks report to each Assembly the du-
ration of each session of their courts and the num-
ber of days the respective judges attended, and,

1. Not all of these were ready for hearing, according to the practice
of that time.

2. John McHenry, Ejectment Law of Maryland, Frederick Town,
1822.