void ab initio without judicial proceedings. The Committee, itself, resolutely 
adhered to the necessity of judicial proceedings, although the rationale of 
such adherence is not apparent. 569 
THE STATUS OF JUDICIAL REVIEW 
The gradual hardening of opinion in the Committee respecting the preferability 
of judicial declarations of nullity may possibly have been due to the 
rather dominating personalities of Mansfield and Wilmot. At the same time 
it should be observed that this method had inherent advantages, since it was 
available against legislation otherwise not reviewable and since the validity 
of acts might at any time be tested judicially. We have seen how in Philips v. 
Savage the question of the effect of a conciliar confirmation upon an act regarded 
as contrary to the laws of England was raised. The same problem later 
was ventilated in reference to Pennsylvania laws. In the charter of that province 
it was provided that transmitted laws were to be disallowed within six 
months if found inconsistent with the royal sovereignty or lawful prerogative 
or contrary to the faith and allegiance due the government; otherwise laws 
thus transmitted were to remain and stand in full force. 670 In effect such 
569 Some evidence of the intrusion of natural 
law principles into the doctrine of judicial 
review is found in the 1767 appeal of Shearman 
v. Cornell, from Rhode Island. In this 
case appellant, it appears, urged in his oral 
argument that a colony act establishing a 
schedule of depreciation for bills of credit 
old tenor, passed while an appeal was pending 
below, was ex post jacto in nature, void as 
against natural justice, and dangerous to England, 
as it concerned contracts. See Case of 
Appellant, Add. MS, 36,220/115-16. Apparently 
the basis of this argument was the 
disadvantageous rate of depreciation established 
by the act. However, since the Committee 
advised that the respondent be allowed 
to redeem the mortgaged premises upon payment 
of the exact amount advanced by appellant 
(in his printed Case) as due under 
the colony act, it is apparent that the argument 
of voidness was rejected by the Committee. 
See PC 2/112/315, 356- 
na Charter and Laws Prov. Pa., 85. A curious 
contention was advanced by Pennsylvania 
which if sustained would have prevented disallowance 
of Pennsylvania acts repugnant or 
contrary to the laws of England. The charter 
for this colony contained a limitation on the 
legislative power that the laws be consonant 
to reason and not repugnant or contrary, but 
as near as conveniently might be, agreeable 
to the laws and statutes and rights of England. 
But the charter provision for legislative 
review mentioned as voidable by the King 
only acts inconsistent with the royal sovereignty 
or prerogative or contrary to the faith and 
allegiance due the government from the proprietor 
or the inhabitants (ibid., 83-84, 85). 
Therefore, it was asserted that exercise of the 
royal disallowance power was restricted to 
acts falling within the two latter categories. 
This view appears to have been accepted by 
the Board of Trade in a July 18, 1750, representation, 
for it related that the acts in 
question were not inconsistent with the 
sovereignty and prerogative of the crown or 
contrary to the faith and allegiance due the 
government from the patentees or inhabitants, 
"in which case only the crown has in 
their charter . . . reserved to itself a power 
of repealing laws passed there" (5 Stat, at 
Large Pa., 486). This was termed a "favorable 
construction" by Ferdinand John Paris 
(ibid., 493). Proprietor Thomas Penn added 
acts of Parliament to the two criteria mentioned 
in the Board of Trade representation 
(Thomas Penn to Richard Peters, Oct. 31, 
1753 [3 MS Penn Letter Booths, 1750-54, 
263]). But in a later, June 24, 1760, representation 
of the Board of Trade this narrow inter-