Joseph Story

Joseph Story (born September 18, 1779, Marblehead, Massachusetts, U.S.—died September 10, 1845, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court (1811–45), who joined Chief Justice John Marshall in giving juristic support to the development of American nationalism. While also teaching law at Harvard (1829–45), he delivered lectures that he elaborated into a monumental series of nine legal commentaries, some of which had international influence.

After graduation from Harvard, Story practiced law at Salem, Mass. (1801–11), became prominent in the Jeffersonian Republican (afterward called the Democratic) Party, was elected to the state legislature (1805), served part of a term in the U.S. House of Representatives (1808–09), returned to the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1810), and was chosen its speaker (1811).

In November 1811 President James Madison appointed Story, at the age of only 32 and without judicial experience, to the Supreme Court. The President did so despite the opposition of Jefferson, who believed Story had contributed to the failure of the foreign trade embargo enacted during Jefferson’s presidency. Although Madison thought Story would contest the Federalist Party nationalism of Chief Justice Marshall, the new justice soon joined Marshall in construing the Constitution broadly in favour of expanding federal power. His opinion for the court in Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee (1816) established the appellate authority of the Supreme Court over the highest state courts in all civil cases involving the federal Constitution, statutes, and treaties. This decision was called by Charles Warren, historian of the Supreme Court, “the keystone of the whole arch of Federal judicial power.”

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From the death of Marshall (July 6, 1835) until the confirmation of Roger Brooke Taney as his successor (March 16, 1836), Story presided over the court. In Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 16 Peters 539 (1842), Story, who opposed slavery, upheld the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 in order to strike down state statutes concerning the recapture of escaped slaves. In Swift v. Tyson, 16 Peters 1 (1842; overruled 1938), he, in effect, created a “federal common law” for commercial cases by holding that federal trial courts, taking jurisdiction when the parties were citizens of different states, need not follow decisions by the courts of the state in which the cause of action arose.

In 1829 Story accepted the first Dane professorship of law, founded specifically for him at Harvard Law School by a writer on law, Nathan Dane. The endowment paid for the publication of Story’s commentaries: Bailments (1832), On the Constitution, 3 vol. (1833), The Conflict of Laws (1834), Equity Jurisprudence, 2 vol. (1836), Equity Pleadings (1838), Agency (1839), Partnership (1841), Bills of Exchange (1843), and Promissory Notes (1845). His works on equity made him, along with Chancellor James Kent of New York, a founder of equity jurisprudence in the United States. The commentary on conflicts affected numerous statutes and treaties of Latin American nations. Alexis de Tocqueville drew heavily on Story’s constitutional commentary.