Calder v. Bull
The Court ruled that Connecticut's legislature did not violate the Constitution when it passed a resolution ordering a new hearing in a probate dispute, even though the new hearing ended up stripping one family of property they had already won in court.
The justices held that the Constitution's ban on 'ex post facto' laws applies only to laws that criminalize or punish past conduct, not to laws that retroactively affect civil property rights, drawing a line that would shape how courts read that clause for centuries.
“There is a great and apparent difference between making an UNLAWFUL act LAWFUL; and the making an innocent action criminal, and punishing it as a CRIME.”
Chase's core distinction explaining why the ex post facto clause covers only criminal, not civil, retroactive laws.
How it got here: Connecticut's probate, appellate, and highest state courts all upheld the legislature's resolution and the will; Calder and his wife then sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing the resolution was an unconstitutional ex post facto law.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A Connecticut probate court refused to approve the will of Normand Morrison, the grandson, which would have let one branch of the family inherit. The state legislature then passed a resolution ordering a new probate hearing. At that new hearing, the will was approved, shifting the inheritance to a different set of relatives, Bull and his wife, and away from Calder and his wife, who had been set to inherit under the earlier ruling.
The question before the Court
Did Connecticut violate the Constitution's ban on states passing "ex post facto" laws when its legislature ordered a new probate hearing that changed who inherited a disputed estate?
Why it matters
The ruling meant state legislatures kept broad power to pass retroactive civil laws affecting property and inheritance disputes without running afoul of the ex post facto clause, so long as they didn't criminally punish past conduct. It gave state courts, not federal courts, primary authority to police whether such laws violated the state's own constitution.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision resolving the underlying property dispute in favor of Bull and his wife, with the Connecticut judgment affirmed. There is no remand; the case settled, for early American constitutional law, that the ex post facto clause reaches only laws with a criminal or punitive character, a distinction that later courts and lawyers continued to apply when evaluating retroactive civil legislation.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly declined to decide whether it had power to strike down an act of Congress as unconstitutional, and declined to decide whether federal courts could void a state law for violating that state's own constitution. Several justices also disagreed on whether the ex post facto clause could ever reach civil rights in vested property, leaving broader retroactivity questions unresolved.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Paterson
Justice Paterson emphasized that Connecticut's unwritten constitution, built on long usage, had historically let its legislature act as a court and grant new trials, so the resolution here might simply be a judicial act unreviewable under the ex post facto clause. Treating it as legislative instead, he relied on Blackstone's definition to conclude ex post facto laws concern only crimes and punishments, not civil property disputes like this one.
Concurrence — Justice Iredell
Justice Iredell agreed with the result but stressed that courts may void a legislative act only when it clearly exceeds constitutionally defined power, not merely because judges think it unjust under natural-law principles, since ideas of natural justice have no fixed standard. He concluded the Connecticut resolution was either a judicial act untouched by the clause, or, if legislative, still outside the ex post facto prohibition because that prohibition covers only criminal matters.
Concurrence — Justice Cushing
Justice Cushing wrote the shortest opinion, finding the case free of difficulty either way: if Connecticut's resolution was a judicial act, the federal Constitution's ex post facto clause simply did not apply to it, and if it was instead a legislative act, it was justified by Connecticut's long-standing, ancient practice of exercising that kind of authority.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- Justice Chase framed the central legal question as whether Connecticut's resolution ordering a new probate hearing counted as an 'ex post facto law' under the Constitution's prohibition on states passing such laws.
- He distinguished between 'ex post facto laws,' a technical term he read as limited to laws with a criminal or punitive effect, and 'retrospective laws' more broadly, which reach backward in time but are not automatically unconstitutional.
- Chase listed the specific kinds of laws he considered truly ex post facto: laws that criminalize previously innocent conduct, that aggravate a crime, that increase punishment beyond what existed when the act was committed, or that loosen the evidence needed to convict someone.
- Because Connecticut's resolution only reopened a civil probate dispute over property and inheritance rather than punishing anyone for past conduct, the Court concluded it fell outside the ex post facto prohibition even though it operated retroactively.
- The Court also reasoned that whether a state law violates that state's own constitution is a question for that state's own courts to decide, not the federal courts, so it would not second-guess Connecticut's courts on that point.
- Applying this framework to the facts, the Court held that the loss suffered by Calder and his wife when the reopened hearing approved the will did not amount to a federal ex post facto violation.