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Joseph Story
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Joseph Story | |
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| In office February 3, 1812 – September 10, 1845 |
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| Nominated by | James Madison |
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| Preceded by | William Cushing |
| Succeeded by | Levi Woodbury |
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| Born | September 18, 1779 Marblehead, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | September 10, 1845 (aged 65) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. |
Joseph Story (September 18, 1779 – September 10, 1845) was an American lawyer and jurist who served on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1811 to 1845. He is most remembered today for his opinions in Martin v. Hunter's Lessee and United States v. The Amistad.
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Story was born at Marblehead, Massachusetts. His father was Elisha Story (1743-1805), a member of the Sons of Liberty, who took part in the Boston Tea Party in 1773. He fought in the battle of Bunker Hill and at Lexington and Concord. He was surgeon in Colonel Little's Essex Regiment and served with Washington at Long Island, White Plains, and Trenton. His mother was Mehitable Pedrick, the daughter of a wealthy Loyalist merchant who lost most of his fortune during the Revolution. Growing up in the aftermath of the Revolution, Joseph absorbed from both of his parents republican values, Unitarian theology, a heritage of Puritan idealism, a fierce sense of nationalism, and an unbending dedication to public service.
Story studied at the Marblehead Academy until the fall of 1794 when his father withdrew him from school because the schoolmaster, William Harris (later president of Columbia University), beat Story with a ruler for some minor offense. Harvard refused to admit the fifteen-year-old Story because he lacked sufficient education. Crestfallen, Story studied at home and by January was sufficiently prepared to enter the university. At Harvard he thrived on studying and scholarship and neither drank nor caroused in any other noticeable way. He graduated in 1798, second in his class. After college Story returned to Marblehead to read law with Samuel Sewall, then a congressman and later chief justice of Massachusetts. He later read law with Samuel Putnam in Salem.
He was admitted to the bar at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1801, and soon attained eminence in his profession. Although Essex County, where he practiced, was a Federalist stronghold, Story gravitated to the Jeffersonian Republicans, working closely with the powerful Crowninshield family. Their patronage helped him gain a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where he served from 1805 to 1808 and in 1811, when he was elected Speaker. Meanwhile, he was a representative in Congress from December 1808 to March 1809, succeeding Jacob Crowninshield after his death.
Story's first wife, Mary Lynde Oliver, died in June 1805, shortly after their marriage. His father had died two months earlier, and Story responded to these combined losses by burying himself in work. Later in 1805 he married Sarah Waldo Wetmore, the daughter of Judge William Wetmore of the Boston Court of Common Pleas. Sarah Story became an invalid after the death of their third surviving child in 1831. Altogether they had seven children, but only two, Mary and William Wetmore Story, sculptor and lawyer, survived to adulthood. A sculpture of Joseph Story by W.W. Story is in the entrance to the Harvard Law School Library. W.W. Story also authored The Life and Letters of Joseph Story (2 vols., Boston and London, 1851), in which he edited out some embarrassing correspondence concerning Story's suggestions on how to adopt a new fugitive slave law.
In November 1811, at the age of thirty-two, he became, by President Madison's appointment, the youngest appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. This position he retained until his death. Here he found his true sphere of work. The traditions of the American people, their strong prejudice for the local supremacy of the states and against a centralized government, had yielded reluctantly to the establishment of the Federal legislative and executive in 1789. The Federal judiciary had been organized at the same time but had never grasped the full measure of its powers.
Soon after Story's appointment, the Supreme Court began to bring out into plain view the powers which the United States Constitution had given it over state courts and state legislation. The leading place in this work belongs to Chief Justice John Marshall, but Story has a very large share in that remarkable series of decisions and opinions, from 1812 until 1832, by which time the work was accomplished. For instance, Story wrote the opinion for a unanimous court in Martin v. Hunter's Lessee following Marshall's recusal. In addition to this he built up the department of admiralty law in the United States federal courts; he devoted much attention to equity jurisprudence and rendered invaluable services to the department of patent law. In 1819 he attracted much attention by his vigorous charges to grand juries denouncing the slave trade, and in 1820 he was a prominent member of the Massachusetts Convention called to revise the state constitution.
Of all of Story's opinions, non-lawyers are most likely to be familiar with the case of the Amistad, which was the basis for a 1997 movie of the same name by Steven Spielberg. Oddly, Story was played by an actual retired Supreme Court justice, Harry Blackmun (and is apparently so far the only Supreme Court justice to have been portrayed by another in a motion picture).
In 1829 he became the first Dane Professor of Law at Harvard University, and continued until his death to hold this position, meeting with remarkable success as a teacher and winning the affection of his students, whom he imbued with much of his own enthusiasm. His industry was unremitting, and, besides attending to his duties as an associate justice and a professor of law, he wrote many reviews and magazine articles, delivered various orations on public occasions, and published a large number of works on legal subjects, which won high praise on both sides of the Atlantic.
Among his publications are:
- Commentaries on the Law of Bailments (1832)
- Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (3 vols., 1833), a work of profound learning which is still the standard treatise on the subject
- Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws (1834), by many regarded as his most significant work
- Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence (2 vols., 1835-1836)
- Equity Pleadings (1838)
- Law of Agency (1839)
- Law of Partnership (1841)
- Law of Bills of Exchange (1843)
- Law of Promissory Notes (1845).
He also edited several standard legal works. His Miscellaneous Writings, first published in 1835, appeared in an enlarged edition 1851.
Story died at home in Cambridge, and is interred at the Mount Auburn Cemetery there. Story County, Iowa was named in his honor, as was Story Hall, a dormitory at Harvard Law School.
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- Story, Joseph. American National Biography, 2000, American Council of Learned Societies.
- Joseph Story at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- Joseph Story at Find A Grave
- Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States on Google Books: Volume I and Volume II
| Preceded by Jacob Crowninshield |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 2nd congressional district May 23, 1808 – March 3, 1809 |
Succeeded by Benjamin Pickman, Jr. |
| Preceded by William Cushing |
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States February 3, 1812 – September 10, 1845 |
Succeeded by Levi Woodbury |
