Juilliard v. Greenman

Juilliard v. Greenman
Supreme Court of the United States
Submitted January 22, 1884 Decided March 3, 1884
Full case name	Juilliard v. Greenman
Citations	110 U.S. 421 (more) 4 S. Ct. 122; 28 L. Ed. 204; 1884 U.S. LEXIS 1712
Holding
Legal Tender Acts are constitutional, and apply in peacetime.
Court membership
Chief Justice Morrison Waite Associate Justices Samuel F. Miller · Stephen J. Field Joseph P. Bradley · John M. Harlan William B. Woods · T. Stanley Matthews Horace Gray · Samuel Blatchford
Case opinions
Majority	Gray
Dissent	Field

Juilliard v. Greenman, 110 U.S. 421 (1884), was a Supreme Court of the United States case in which issuance of greenbacks as legal tender was challenged in peacetime. The Legal Tender Acts of 1862 and 1863 were upheld.

Julliard sold and delivered 100 bales of cotton to Greenman for $5,122.90. Greenman tendered $5,100 in United States legal tender notes and the rest in coin, but Julliard would not accept the U.S. notes. The tendered notes were originally issued under an act of Congress passed on February 25, 1862 and March 3, 1863, during the civil war. An act of May 31, 1878 provided to “forbid the further retirement of United States legal tender notes.”

In an 8-1 decision, resting largely on prior court cases, the power "of making the notes of the United States a legal tender in payment of private debts", was interpreted as "included in the power to borrow money and to provide a national currency".

Justice Field dissented, challenging the Courts interpretation of the terms, to borrow and coin money.

He explained that the term to borrow money was well settled in other instruments such as municipal and corporate bonds, and private contracts. Allowing the government to make their notes legal tender would interfer with third party contractual obligations as now third parties would be compelled by law to accept notes instead of coin. A private corporate bond could certainly not require an amusement park to accept the bond in exchange for entry. To find that the term to borrow money as written in the constitution allows interference in third party contracts would certainly improve the value of the note, but it would deviate from the meaning of the term to borrow money.

The meaning of the terms ‘to coin money’ is not at all doubtful. “It is to mould metallic substances into forms convenient for circulation and to stamp them with the impress of the government.” In the clause authorizing congress ‘to provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States,’ a distinction is clearly made between debt and coin.

Justice Field also cited many quotes by the founders against paper money, including the following by James Madison: "The pretext for paper currency, and particularly for making the bills a tender either for public or private debts, was cut off."

See also

• Legal Tender Cases

External links

• Full text of the opinion courtesy of Justia.com
• Summary of Julliard v. Greenman at Teogatha Law