Legal Tender Cases

The Legal Tender Cases were a series of United States Supreme Court cases in the latter part of the nineteenth century that affirmed the constitutionality of paper money. In the 1870 case of Hepburn v. Griswold, the Court had held that legal tender in the form of paper money violated the United States Constitution. The Legal Tender Cases reversed Hepburn, beginning with Knox v. Lee and Parker v. Davis in 1871, and then Juilliard v. Greenman in 1884.