Richards v. Mackall
1885 United States Supreme Court case
Richards v. Mackall, 113 U.S. 539 (1885), was an appeal from the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia to the High Court on whether or not an appeal from that Court to this Court may be allowed by that Court sitting in the special term.
Chief Justice Waite delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Supreme Court of the District of Columbia consists of one Chief Justice and five Associate Justices. Rev.Stat.Dist.Col. § 750; 20 Stat. 320, c. 99, § 1. The law provides for both special and general terms of the court, and for an appeal from the special to the general term, but the judgments and decrees, when rendered, are, whether they be at general or special term, the judgments and decrees of the supreme court. Rev.Stat.Dist.Col.
“Richards v. Mackall” enters the record as 1885 United States Supreme Court case. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Richards, Mackall and United can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Richards v. Mackall” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Richards, Mackall and United provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7330303. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1885.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Richards v. Mackall”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Richards v. Mackall primary sources, Richards v. Mackall archive and Richards research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Richards v. Mackall”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Richards v. Mackall” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.