Definition
The Supreme Court of Errors was the highest appellate court in the state of Connecticut, serving as that state's court of last resort. It exercised final appellate jurisdiction over decisions of the lower Connecticut courts, hearing appeals on questions of law and error. The court operated under this name from the colonial period through the mid-twentieth century, when Connecticut reorganized its judiciary and renamed the body the Supreme Court of Connecticut in 1965.
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Common Confusion
The Supreme Court of Errors should not be confused with the United States Supreme Court or with Connecticut's intermediate appellate court. Researchers encountering the name in historical sources sometimes mistake it for a specialized error-correction tribunal with limited jurisdiction — it was not. It was the plenary court of last resort for the state, hearing the full range of civil and criminal appeals. The word "errors" in the name reflects an older procedural vocabulary, not a restriction on subject matter.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is an essential waypoint for any researcher working with Connecticut legal materials predating 1965. Decisions from this court appear in reporters, digests, and secondary sources under the name "Supreme Court of Errors," and that name will not cross-reference automatically with materials issued after the 1965 reorganization under the court's modern name. Researchers using Law Mind corpus materials should treat "Supreme Court of Errors" and "Supreme Court of Connecticut" as the same institutional line when tracing precedent across that boundary.
The naming convention itself carries historical information. "Court of Errors" terminology was common in early American state court systems, borrowed from English appellate practice where writs of error were the standard mechanism for reviewing lower court judgments. Connecticut retained the name long after most other states had abandoned it, making Connecticut opinions instantly identifiable by court name in multi-jurisdictional research.
A practical trap: citators and digest systems organized by court name may split Connecticut's appellate precedent across two entries. A case decided in 1950 by the Supreme Court of Errors and a case decided in 1970 by the Supreme Court of Connecticut represent the same appellate line of authority, but older finding tools do not always make that continuity explicit.
Researchers working in equity, property, or contract law with deep Connecticut roots should also be alert to the possibility that landmark Connecticut authority appears under the older name and may be underrepresented in modern secondary sources that index primarily by the current court name.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement: both define the Supreme Court of Errors as the appellate tribunal and court of last resort in Connecticut, and neither adds qualifying detail beyond that identification. The brevity of both entries is itself informative — by the time these standard dictionaries were compiled, the term was sufficiently settled that no doctrinal elaboration was thought necessary. What the historical dictionaries do not provide is any account of the court's origins, its procedural character, or the 1965 reorganization that ended its existence under this name. Researchers relying solely on these dictionary entries would have an accurate but thin picture.
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Jurisdictional Note
The Supreme Court of Errors was exclusively a Connecticut institution. Other American states used similar "court of errors" terminology at various points in their histories — New Jersey's Court of Errors and Appeals is a parallel example — but those were distinct courts governed by their own state constitutional frameworks. Connecticut's use of the name is not evidence of shared doctrine or procedure with those other tribunals.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Not directly applicable. The Law Mind Military, Veterans & Admiralty Law Encyclopedia entry on Military Appeals (military_7) addresses a structurally analogous topic — hierarchical appellate review and courts of last resort — but covers a distinct jurisdictional domain and is not a recommended cross-reference for research on the Supreme Court of Errors.
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