Penn v Lord Baltimore

Penn v Lord Baltimore
William Penn
Court	Chancery
Full case name	Penn v Lord Baltimore
Decided	15 May 1750
Citation(s)	(1750) 1 Ves Sen 444 27 ER 1132 [1774] All ER Rep 99 11 Digest (Repl) 377, 407
Transcript(s)	CommonLII
Case history
Prior action(s)	(1745) Ridg t H 332 27 ER 847
Court membership
Judge sitting	Lord Hardwicke LC
Keywords
conflict of laws title to foreign land arbitration

Penn v Lord Baltimore (1750) 1 Ves Sen 444 was a judicial decision of Lord Hardwicke LC in relation to the long-running Penn–Calvert boundary dispute.^[1]

The case is important both as a legal precedent under English law (in relation to the extent to which the English courts may act in relation to matters involving title to foreign land),^[2][3][4] but also as an event in its own right during a formative period of the pre-history of the United States.^[5][6]

The decision helped end the 85-year dispute over the Pennsylvania–Maryland border,^[7] although the issue was not definitively resolved until King George III formally approved the newly surveyed Mason–Dixon boundaries in 1768. Ironically, just seven years later the American Revolution occurred, and both parties essentially lost all of the lands they had been arguing over for so long.