Robert Cooper Grier

“ They cannot compel the human mind not to distinguish between things that differ. The distinction between the different forms of actions for different wrongs, requiring different remedies, lies in the nature of things; it is absolutely inseparable from the correct administration of justice in common-law courts.
The result of these experiments, so far as they have come to our knowledge, has been to destroy the certainty and simplicity of all pleadings, and introduce on the record an endless wrangle in writing, perplexing to the court, delaying and impeding the administration of justice. ”

“ But the common law, which wisely commits the decision of questions of law to a court supposed to be learned in the law, and the decision of the facts to jury, necessarily requires that the controversy, before it is submitted to the tribunal having jurisdiction of it, should be reduced to one or more integral propositions of law or fact; hence it is necessary that the parties should frame the allegations which they respectively make in support of their demand or defence into certain writings called pleadings. ”

“ But in those States where the courts of the United States administer the common law, they cannot adopt these novel inventions, which propose to amalgamate law and equity by enacting a hybrid system of pleadings unsuited to the administration of either. ”