section 7.: The requirement of the act of 1850, that the cases be adjudicated “in a summary manner,” is unconstitutional.

Section 6th of the act makes it the “duty” of the court, judge, or commissioner, “to hear and determine the case of such claimant in a summary manner.”

This determining the case in a summary manner is only another mode of excluding testimony on the part of the defendant. The plaintiff of course prepares his testimony beforehand, and has it ready at the moment the alleged fugitive is arrested. If the case then be tried, without giving the defendant time to procure any testimony, the decision must necessarily be made upon the testimony of the claimant alone. Such is the design of the act, for the defendant being arrested, the Edition: current; Page: [25] act requires that he shall be “taken forthwith before such court, judge, or commissioner, whose duty it shall be to hear and determine the case of such claimant in a summary manner,”—that is, without granting the delay necessary to enable the defendant to obtain testimony for his defence.

The whole object and effect of this provision is to make it necessary for the court to determine the case on the evidence furnished by the plaintiff alone. And the exclusion of all testimony for the defendant, by this “summary” process, is equally unconstitutional with its exclusion in the manner commented on in the last two preceding sections—for the right of a party to be heard in a court of justice, necessarily implies a right to reasonable time in which to procure his testimony.