Loyalty on Trial

Loyalty on Trial was produced by the UNC School of Law on the occasion of its Sesquicentennial celebration in 1995.

The 27-minute video is a reenactment of Bayard v. Singleton, 1787, a historic case in North Carolina judicial history which was a precursor to Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 U.S. Supreme Court decision establishing judicial review.

Bayard v. Singleton involved confiscation of the property of a wealthy landowner, Samuel Cornell, who left his property before the conclusion of the Revolutionary War. After the war, Mr. Cornell's daughter, Elizabeth Bayard, returned to claim the land from the state. She was denied ownership and told by the legislature that she had no right to a jury trial to settle the case. She petitioned the Superior Court, called then the Court of Conference, which nullified the legislature's ruling and granted her the right to a trial, guaranteed under the state's Constitution.

The video was produced by Video Dialog Inc. of Chapel Hill. Performance of this video from the website for educational and noncommercial purposes is permitted. Free VHS copies are available from the law library.

Loyalty On Trial stream (QuickTime)

A study guide is available in Adobe PDF format to accompany the dramatization of the case on videocassette.

QuickTime Download