136 court of appeals of maryland

sel should furnish the court with a brief of the
facts upon which the questions of law were to
arise, and a statement of those questions. The
statement of questions was apparently what came
to be called "points." The rule left the furnish-
ing of notes of argument still voluntary; in 1834
it seems to have been merely voluntary, for at
the June term of that year a rule was passed on
the Western Shore,

That in all cases where notes are filed on the part of the ap-
pellant or appellee, they shall be accompanied by the parties'
copy of the record to which such notes relate, as without it the
courts are unable to act thereon.

The files of the court contain few notes of that
time or of earlier years, but the papers of cases
in the forties almost invariably contain notes,
sometimes called "points," submitted by counsel.
And after a few years, that is to say, in the late
forties, it became a regular practice to print a
copy of the points in each case, counsel commonly
directing the clerk to have the printing done.
Finally, a rule passed on the Western Shore in
1848 required that thereafter counsel on each side
should "at or before the second term, prepare and
file with the clerk a full statement or abstract of
the case and the points." And the clerk was pro-
hibited from placing a case on the trial docket
before this was done. Since that time briefs have
always been required, but then, and for many years
after, the briefs consisted of short, orderly state-
ments of the arguments on the points, each some-
times only a single sentence in length, and all
covering only a page or two of print Only one
copy was furnished as yet. So that during the first