90 court of appeals of maryland

Pinkney, in his younger days at Annapolis, made
reports of cases, not in the Court of Appeals,
but in the General Court and the Court of Chan-
cery.⁴⁷ And when, later, Harris and McHenry
took up the reporting of cases, they reported prin-
cipally cases in the General Court, and only a few
cases in the Court of Appeals, chiefly chancery
appeals. When Bishop Pinkney spoke of Wil-
liam Pinkney's friendship with John Johnson, a
member of the Court of Appeals from 1806 to
1811, and after that time Chancellor of the state,
he described him only as having been Chancellor.⁴⁸
Judge Johnson resigned from the Court of Ap-
peals to become Chancellor. In 1801, Thomas
Harris, Jr., produced his book of Modern Entries,
a most comprehensive collection of forms, and in
it he gave the styles and constitutions of the
three federal courts, Supreme, Circuit and Dis-
trict, the General Court, and the county courts of
Maryland, but nothing of the Court of Appeals.
And the delay in the organization of the Court
of Appeals, and the continuance of two vacancies
on it from 1784 and 1792, respectively, to 1801,
seem significant. It is, indeed, difficult to re-
capture a conception of the court consistent with
these facts and at the same time consistent with the
right of appellate review in the court, and the im-
portance which the Assembly of 1778 said they at-
tached to its judges. Trial work undoubtedly was
treated as of relatively greater importance than it
is now; and probably the position of the Court of
Appeals was still controlled by its historical an-

47. Bishop Pinkney, Life of William Pinkney, 38. The reports were
never published.

48. Life of William Pinkney, 49.