Letter from the Author

It is a great pleasure for me to introduce to the lawyers of Michigan the "Verdict of History: The History of Michigan Jurisprudence Through Its Significant Supreme Court Cases." It has been my good fortune to have the opportunity to write this history for the Michigan Supreme Court Historical Society. The Society's goal in undertaking the Verdict of History Project is to publicize and arouse interest in the history of the Michigan Supreme Court through some of its most important decisions.

When the Society, in 2004, sent out a call for an author, its "top cases committee" had already put a great deal of work into the selection of cases. The initial plan was to tell the story of the 10 most important decisions in the Court's history. The committee had solicited suggestions from members of the state bar and bench as to the cases they viewed as most significant. They had also compiled lists of the most frequently cited Michigan decisions from databases such as Westlaw. By the time I joined the committee, there were dozens of case candidates.

The committee knew that no 10 cases would satisfy everyone, that inevitably a favorite would be left out, and some would think lesser significant cases were included. The committee also realized that no perfectly objective set of criteria like citation could do all of the selection work. In the end, the committee expanded the list to 20 and settled on those cases that would work together to tell the story of the decisional history of the Court as a whole.

The most important factor in the decision to include a case was the way in which it influenced and reflected the life of Michigan over the years, recognizing that law both shapes and is shaped by politics, society, culture, and economics. The committee has tried to include cases that span the full chronological range of the 150-year-old Court. As the committee surveyed the life of the Court, it noticed a pattern of four distinct periods.

I. The Formative Years, 1858-1870
II. The Forgotten Years, 1870-1940
III. The Liberal Activist Years, 1940-1970
IV. Michigan and the Culture Wars, 1970-

The first was the Court's founding era, associated with the famous "Big Four"—Thomas MacIntyre Cooley, Isaac Christiancy, James Campbell, and Benjamin F. Graves. Some of the best-known of the cases came from the Civil War period. Then came what might be called the dark ages, or "forgotten years," of the Court, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this period several cases presented themselves as important illustrations of how Michigan's people, culture, economy, and politics developed, a period during which the state became urban, industrial, and modern. The next major period was the era of what could be called liberal judicial activism, the 1950s and 1960s, a period associated with Governor and later Justice G. Mennen Williams. The last period, that after the 1960s, naturally drew the largest number of cases, being of the greatest interest to our contemporary world. This is the period in which the Court dealt with many issues that grew out of what has been called the "culture wars" of our own day.

In addition to choosing cases that spanned the chronological life of the Court, the committee also tried to choose cases that illustrated the great variety of subjects that the Court had to deal with. My own area of expertise is political and constitutional history; however, the life of the Court encompasses a wider and more popular set of issues. Thus, the cases deal with contracts, negligence, legislative apportionment, civil rights, murder, employment and labor unions, adoption, sovereign immunity, nudism, suicide and the like. The great variety of the lives of Michiganders is displayed in the range of cases discussed.

Finally, certain of the cases were chosen for the peculiar personalities or subject matter involved. For example, it would be unimaginable not to include an opinion by Justice Cooley. And the committee could not resist including an opinion by Justice Voelker, the colorful novelist (a/k/a Robert Traver) and "backwoods barrister" who wrote Anatomy of a Murder. Also, a committee of lawyers could never leave out Sherwood v Walker, the famous "cow case" taught to generations of law students to the present day.

In sum, the Historical Society hopes that these cases will provide the bar and bench of Michigan a survey of the rich history of our Supreme Court. Every state supreme court should be so fortunate as to have the historical society that Michigan does. This work contributed a great deal to my own fund of knowledge as a scholar, teacher, and citizen, as I hope it will for all who read it. Above all, the Society hopes that its presentation will pique your interest in the story of the Michigan Supreme Court, of which the committee knows this project barely scratches the surface.

—Paul Moreno, 2008