Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story: Statesman of the Old Republic

"Story was another justice who served for 30 years; he was appointed in 1812 and served until 1845. He and Marshall were allies on the Court. He was an extreme nationalist. Partly that’s a reflection of his New England roots; New England is where the Federalists were especially strong. Story was a brilliant lawyer. He’s a founder of Harvard Law School. He taught at Harvard Law School. Some of the most interesting issues involving his time in the Court are slavery issues. Story, like most people in Massachusetts, was anti-slavery. He was responsible for deciding many cases involving slavery. As a judge who was personally opposed to slavery, he faced the problem that the Constitution was pretty clearly pro-slavery. Story wrote the opinion for the Court in an 1842 case called Prigg vs. Pennsylvania , which determined whether the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was inconsistent with a Pennsylvania law that tried to protect free Blacks from being kidnapped. If Story were to say that the federal Fugitive Slave Law was unconstitutional or that the Pennsylvania law somehow survives the federal statute, you might very well expect Southern slaveowners to just walk out of the union. So he’s trying to balance conflicting interests. His dilemma provokes really profound questions about what a judge is supposed to do when their moral views are affronted by the law. He writes a very interesting opinion. That’s only a small part of the book. Story was very active in all sorts of areas of law. He also served when South Carolina was threatening to nullify the federal tariff in the early 1830s. There’s great correspondence between John Marshall and President Andrew Jackson. Story and Marshall were very pessimistic about the state of the union in the early 1830s. They were profoundly opposed to Andrew Jackson and his policies. So there’s a lot of fascinating correspondence and extrajudicial writings by Story. Story also wrote the most distinguished commentaries on the Constitution of that era. Newmyer explores all of that as well. It’s a terrific biography, judicial biography at its best."