Chotard Pope
| Decision Date | 10 February 1827 |
| Citation | 25 U.S. 586,6 L.Ed. 737,12 Wheat. 586 |
| Parties | CHOTARD and Others against POPE and Another |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
The rights of the complainants in the land in litigation in this cause, depend upon the construction of the act of Congress of May 8th, 1820, passed for the relief of the legal representatives of Henry Willis. The words of that act under which the complainants suppose themselves entitled to relief, are these: 'That the legal representatives of Henry Willis be, and they are hereby authorized to enter without payment, in lieu, &c. in any land office, &c. in the States of Mississippi or Alabama, &c., a quantity of land not exceeding thirteen hundred acres, &c.' Under the operation of these words, assuming the right to appropriate any unpatented land in the two States, the complainants have asserted the privilege of entering a tract of land which covers the site surveyed and laid off for the town of Claiborne, in the State of Alabama. The proper officers have refused to issue the ordinary evidences of title, and have gone on to sell out the town lots according to law. This bill is filed against the register of the land office, and the purchaser of one of the town lots, to compel them to make titles to complainants.
On behalf of the United States, it is contended, that the literal meaning of the terms of the act is limited and restrained by the context, and by considerations arising out of the general system of land laws of the United States, into which this act is ingrafted; and that, so construed, the right granted is limited to that description of lands which are liable to be taken up at private sale.
And such is the opinion of this Court. That the legislature had distinctly in view its general provisions for disposing of the unappropriated lands of the United States, is distinctly shown in every line of the act under consideration. First, the party is referred to the land officeto make his entry; he is then confined to the locations designated by the surveys made by the United States. After which, it goes on to enact, that 'the register or registers of the land offices aforesaid, shall issue the necessary certificate or certificates, on the return of which to the general land office, a patent or patents shall issue.' Here the whole organization of the land office is brought into review; and if then the term enter can be shown to be restricted and confined in its application to a particular class or description of lands, it will follow, that when used in laws relating to the appropriation of lands, it must lose its general and original signification, and be confined to what may be called its technical or legislative meaning.
The term entry, as applied to appropriations of land, was probably borrowed from the State of Virginia, in which we find it used in that sense at a very remote period. Many cases will be found in the reports of the decisions of this Court, in which the title to western lands were drawn in question, which will show how familiarly and generally the term is used by Court and bar. It sense, in the legal nomenclature of this country, is now as fixed and definite as that of many terms borrowed from the common law. It means that act by which an individual acquires an inceptive right to a portion of the unappropriated soil of the country, by filing his claim in the office of an officer known in the legislation of several States by the epithet of an entry-taker, and corresponding very much in his functions with the registers of land offices, under the acts of the United States. In the natural progress of language, the term has been introduced into the laws of the...
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