The Pearsall v. Smith case in 1892 revolved around a dispute over land ownership and the validity of a will. The plaintiff, Pearsall, claimed that he was entitled to certain lands based on an alleged will made by his father. However, the defendant, Smith (who was also executor of the estate), argued that there was no such valid will and therefore all property should be divided equally among heirs according to intestacy laws. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Smith stating that evidence presented did not conclusively prove existence or validity of any such will as claimed by Pearsall. Therefore, it held that under North Carolina law governing distribution of estates without a valid testamentary document (intestate succession), all children were entitled to equal shares regardless their legitimacy status.

In the dissenting opinion for Pearsall v. Smith, Justice Brewer argued that the majority's decision was fundamentally flawed in its interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. He contended that this amendment did not grant Congress unlimited power to interfere with state laws and regulations regarding voting rights but rather limited such interference to cases where states were denying or abridging citizens' right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The justice believed that North Carolina had a constitutional right to establish literacy tests as a prerequisite for voting without federal intervention unless it could be proven these tests were being used specifically as tools of racial discrimination. In his view, there was no evidence presented in this case indicating discriminatory intent behind North Carolina's literacy test law; therefore he saw no grounds for declaring it unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment.