Such was still the situation when the case of Fletcher vs. Peck ¹ in 1810 raised before the Supreme Court the question whether the Georgia Legislature had the right to rescind a land grant made by a preceding Legislature. On any of three grounds Marshall might easily have disposed of this case before coming to the principal question. In the first place, it was palpably a moot case; that is to say, it was to the interest of the opposing parties to have the rescinding act set aside. The Court would not today take jurisdiction of such a case, but Marshall does not even suggest such a solution of the question, though Justice Johnson does in his concurring opinion. In the second place, Georgia's own claim to the lands had been most questionable, and consequently her right to grant them to others was equally dubious; but this, too, is an issue which Marshall avoids. Finally, the grant had been procured by corrupt means, but Marshall ruled that this was not a subject the Court might enter upon; and for the ordinary run of cases in which undue influence is alleged to have induced the enactment of a law, the ruling is clearly sound. But this was no ordinary case. The fraud asserted against the grant was a matter of universal notoriety; it was, indeed, the most resounding scandal of the generation; and surely judges may assume to know what is known to all and may act upon their knowledge. ¹ 6 Cranch, 87. Furthermore, when one turns to the part of Marshall's opinion which deals with the constitutional issue, one finds not a little evidence of personal predilection on the part of the Chief Justice. He starts out by declaring the rescinding act void as a violation of vested rights, of the underlying principles of society and government, and of the doctrine of the separation of powers. Then he apparently realizes that a decision based on such grounds must be far less secure and much less generally available than one based on the words of the Constitution; whereupon he brings forward the obligation of contracts clause. At once, however, he is confronted with the difficulty that the obligation of a contract is the obligation of a contract still to be fulfilled, and that a grant is an executed contract over and done with--functus officio. This difficulty he meets by asserting that every grant is attended by an implied contract on the part of the grantor not to reassert his right to the thing granted. This, of course, is a palpable fiction on Marshall's part, though certainly not an unreasonable one. For undoubtedly when a grant is made without stipulation to the contrary, both parties assume that it will be permanent.