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Appendix 2 South Carolina Court System and the Case Universe The Court System Unlike the organization of northern courts that celebrated egalitarianism and state activism as the essence of republicanism, the evolution of Carolina’s legal system tacked differently. After the American Revolution, Charleston-style republicanism underscored the necessity of remaining free from the control of others and avoiding the threat of centralized power. This fundamental commitment derived largely from slavery and the mandate of a master’s dominion, as well as from the notion of honor, that “constellation of ideas and values in which a man’s sense of self-worth rested on the degree of respect commanded from others.”Individual autonomy ranked high within this ideological cluster and undergirded low-country legal culture throughout the closing decades of the eighteenth century and into the next century. This persistence of individualism thwarted periodic efforts by a few legislators to reorganize the state’s multiple, decentralized , and overlapping courts.1 A woman with legal grievances (or a woman on the other side of the dock) faced tangled and confusing legal jurisdictions. She ¤rst encountered a local of¤cial such as a justice of the peace, mayor, or other magistrate, appointed by state legislators. These men depended on court fees as well as the goodwill of the state legislature, and some of them were “greedy . . . incompetent [and] notoriously untrained in the law” because South Carolina law did not require that all justices and magistrates have legal training. They administered “irregular and unequal” justice in jury-less summary trials, or summary proceedings. In 1785 Charleston jurists refused to participate in a newly reorganized county court system that diminished this highly localized authority. State legislators acquiesced to the noncompliance, and local low-country of¤cials maintained their power.2 Cases presented to grand juries and, if brought to trial, heard before petit juries, represented the next level of judicial jurisdiction, but a high rate of summary acquittals against white people and informal settlements precluded many cases from advancing to this stage. Nevertheless, if a woman’s case proceeded further, she found herself in a district circuit court, conducted biannually by peripatetic appellate judges, and subsequently in one of several overlapping appeals courts. In 1824 state legislators streamlined this legal maze by establishing one central appeals court, consisting of three men who exercised ¤nal jurisdiction in both law and equity. However, in 1835 state legislators dissolved this consolidated court of appeals, a decision that bespoke opposition of the master class to centralized power and any encroachment on “informal systems of authority” or “plantation justice.” It also revealed legislators’ irritation at what they deemed overly liberal rulings on “negro rights” by, particularly, Justice John Belton O’Neall. They restored the pre-1824 system of two separate appellate systems—one in law and one in equity—each of which comprised several circuit judges and chancellors who heard cases in Columbia and Charleston. After 1836, split decisions by these courts could be appealed to a combined (law/equity) conference court, creating an astonishingly convo- luted con¤guration in which one judge might hear a case three times. A separate state “court of ordinary” (later the probate court) authenticated wills, administered estates, appointed guardians, and issued marriage licenses. Not until 1859 did the legislature restore the 1824 structure.3 In Charleston a separate city court—in the 1780s known as the Court of Wardens, in 1801 renamed the Court of Inferior Jurisdiction, and in 1820 designated the City Court of Charleston—was empowered by the state legislature to try all misdemeanors occurring within the city. The court’s jurisdiction expanded several times during the nineteenth century and, in 1836, a separate Police Court was added to the city’s judicial system. The Police Court wielded the power to in®ict corporal punishment and to incarcerate those charged of crimes within the city. Thus, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Charleston women who came to court braved not only judges bent on safeguarding patriarchal power, but also a confusing institutional morass.4 Mining legislative and court records to assess women’s status and to appraise the use of criminality by the master class in wielding social control presents several challenges. Not all criminal acts found their way into the courts. The Magistrates and Freeholders courts established under South Carolina’s black code were not required to keep written records of court proceedings until 1839; lower court records are incomplete for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and not all cases...

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