in particular to the seeking out of the lineage of any instrumentality of government. 
Lawyers are fully cognizant of this, although their probings into past 
facts and circumstances are rarely as relentless and complete as their inquiries 
into the historical ramifications of legal rules. In consequence, their results as 
often as not fall short of the exacting standards of sound historical performance, 
and doubtless it is this failing which has helped to determine the laymen's 
valuation of legal sources at large. 
But whatever may be the shortcomings for scientific purposes of the history 
that gets written into judicial decisions, this is no reason to assume that they 
are completely bereft of virtue or to bell them one and all as lepers, at any 
hazard to be shunned. There are many cases in the books, particularly in the 
field of public law, that have served as conduits of matter from the past into 
their own present and so on into the future. To the extent that they embody 
material of legal or of official character immediately useful, they serve as 
source books of action for their time, a fact which should at once stamp them 
as historical documents of the first order. This quality, we believe, deservedly 
attaches to certain judgments of the seventeenth century composed at a stage 
in the art of advocacy and of judicial argument when the range of acceptable 
citation possessed a richness and variety it was never again to have. One of 
the most notable of these was the great report, written by Sir Edward Coke, 
which brought to the doorsteps of Stuart administrators the muniments of the 
medieval empire—the report of Calvin's Case (1608) , 204 The judgment here 
was a landmark in the settlement of the constitutional relations of England 
and Scotland; from the manner of its grounding, it was destined also to fix 
the constitutional status of the new plantations. 
Ostensibly the matter at issue was the question of the rights before English 
law of an infant Scot but the underlying problems were of such portent that 
the cause was adjourned to the Exchequer Chamber to be argued finally by 
the Lord Chancellor and the judges of the three common law courts. The 
argument traversed some of the most basic constitutional questions ever raised 
in an English court, matter which for convenience was ranged by the reporter 
under the four words: laws, kingdoms, ligeance, and alienage. The 
implications of these were so thoroughly explored in their history, both within 
the law and without, and the conclusions of the court were so firmly buttressed 
by lavish citations from past official action as to settle beyond a peradventure 
the immediate availability of any rules developed in connection with 
medieval dominion administration. These were made relevant to the relations 
with the New World establishments, not merely through subsequent direct 
204 7 Co. Rep. 1.