Maryland. Court of Appeals

The Court of Appeals was established in 1694 by a commission sent with royal governor Francis Nicholson. Prior to 1681, the Governor and members of the Council, who constituted the upper house of the Assembly, exercised appellate jurisdiction much as the House of Lords in England. Appeals were not uncommon, despite the fact that the Governor and Council also sat as the judges of the Provincial Court where the appealed cases originated. This redundancy and questions about the legal right of the upper house of Assembly to hear appeals became such an issue that no appeals were heard between 1681 and 1694. Governor Nicholson's commission reestablished the upper house of the Assembly, now sitting as the Court of Appeals as the colony's highest appellate court.

To blunt critism of their dual judicial roles, the practice developed where a Council member would not sit on the Court of Appeals when it heard a case in which he had sat as trial judge.

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