US Supreme Court Reporter
When the United States Supreme Court came to Philadelphia in 1791, he would become their first reporter of decisions starting with West v. Barnes (1791). Because the post of reporter was an unofficial one, Dallas did his work from his own funds. The volumes, of which he produced only four, were faulted for being incomplete, inaccurate, and extremely tardy. For example, the landmark ruling in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793) which prompted the Eleventh Amendment, was not reported by Dallas until five years later, well after the Amendment had been ratified. When he abandoned reporting of decisions when the Court moved to the new capital, Washington, D.C., he declared "I have found such miserable encouragement for my reports that I have determined to call them all in, and devote them to the rats in the State-House." He was a founder of the Democratic-Republican Societies in 1793.
Read more about this topic: Alexander J. Dallas (statesman)
Famous quotes containing the words supreme, court and/or reporter:
“It was the supreme expression of the mediocrity of the apparatus that Stalin himself rose to his position.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“Of all things in life, Mrs. Lee held this kind of court-service in contempt, for she was something more than republican—a little communistic at heart, and her only serious complaint of the President and his wife was that they undertook to have a court and to ape monarchy. She had no notion of admitting social superiority in any one, President or Prince, and to be suddenly converted into a lady-in-waiting to a small German Grand-Duchess, was a terrible blow.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“I don’t know if everybody is ready to hear a woman tell them so-and-so is going to run off left tackle. But you know what? They’re going to hear it.”
—Lesley Visser, U.S. sports reporter and announcer. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 85 (June 17, 1991)