Calder v. Bull

Iredell’s opinion in Calder v. Bull (1798) helped establish the principle of judicial review five years before it was actually tested in Marbury v. Madison. He is, however, remembered primarily for his dissents, most notably that in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), which maintained that an action of assumpsit…

In Calder v. Bull (1798), he asserted that legislative power over liberty and property is limited by “certain vital principles in our free Republican governments”; later courts read these principles into the “due process of law” clauses of the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendment to the…