Benjamin Robbins Curtis
Benjamin Robbins Curtis | |
---|---|
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States | |
In office October 10, 1851 – September 30, 1857 | |
Nominated by | Millard Fillmore |
Preceded by | Levi Woodbury |
Succeeded by | Nathan Clifford |
Personal details | |
Born | Watertown, Massachusetts, U.S. | November 4, 1809
Died | September 15, 1874 (aged 64) Newport, Rhode Island, U.S. |
Political party |
|
Spouses | Eliza Woodward
(m. 1833; died 1844)Anna Scolley
(m. 1846; died 1860)Maria Allen (m. 1861) |
Children | 12 |
Education | Harvard University (BA, LLB) |
Benjamin Robbins Curtis (November 4, 1809 – September 15, 1874) was an American lawyer and judge who served as an
Curtis resigned from the Supreme Court in 1857 to return to private legal practice in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1868, Curtis was President Andrew Johnson's defense lawyer during Johnson's impeachment trial.
Early life and education
Curtis was born November 4, 1809, in
First private practice
Admitted to the Massachusetts bar later that year, Curtis began his legal career.
In 1836, Curtis participated in the Massachusetts "
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, through its Chief Justice, Lemuel Shaw, ruled that Med was free, and made her a ward of the court. The Massachusetts decision was considered revolutionary at the time. Previous decisions elsewhere had ruled that slaves voluntarily brought into a free state, and who resided there many years, became free. Commonwealth v. Aves was the first decision to hold that a slave voluntarily brought into a free state became free the moment he or she arrived. The decision in this freedom suit proved especially controversial in slaveholding southern states. As with his fellow Massachusettsan and Harvard graduate John Adams, Curtis's willingness to serve as defense attorney for the Aves family did not necessarily reflect his personal or legal views, as shown by his later dissent in the 1857 Dred Scott decision.
Curtis became a member of the Harvard Corporation, one of the two governing boards of Harvard University, in February 1846. In 1849, he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives.[8] Appointed chairman of a committee to reform state judicial procedures, they presented the Massachusetts Practice Act of 1851. "It was considered a model of judicial reform and was approved by the legislature without amendment."[9]
At the time, Curtis was viewed as a rival to Rufus Choate and was thought to be the preeminent leader of the New England bar. Curtis came from a politically connected family, and had studied under Joseph Story and John Hooker Ashmun[10] at Harvard Law School. His legal arguments were thought to be well-reasoned and persuasive. Curtis was a Whig and in tune with their politics, and Whigs were in power. As a potential young appointee, he was thought to be the seed of a long and productive judicial career. He was appointed by the president, approved by the Senate, elevated to the Supreme Court bench, but was gone in six years.[11]
Supreme Court service
Curtis received a
He was the first Supreme Court Justice to have earned a law degree from a law school. His predecessors had either "
His opinion in
Curtis was one of the two dissenters in the Dred Scott case, in which he disagreed with essentially every holding of the court. He argued against the majority's denial of the bid for emancipation by the slave Dred Scott.[16] Curtis stated that, because there were black citizens in both Southern and Northern states at the time of the drafting of the federal Constitution, black people thus were clearly among the "people of the United States" contemplated thereunder. Curtis also opined that because the majority had found that Scott lacked standing, the Court could not go further and rule on the merits of Scott's case.[12]
Curtis resigned from the court on September 30, 1857, in part because he was exasperated with the fraught atmosphere in the court engendered by the case.
Return to private practice
Upon his resignation, Curtis returned to his Boston law practice, becoming a "leading lawyer" in the nation. During the ensuing decade and a half, he argued several cases before the Supreme Court.
In 1868, Curtis acted as defense counsel for President Andrew Johnson during Johnson's impeachment trial. He read the answer to the articles of impeachment, which was "largely his work". His opening statement lasted two days, and was commended for legal prescience and clarity.[10][24] He successfully persuaded the Senate that an impeachment was a judicial act, not a political act, so that it required a full hearing of evidence. This precedent "influenced every subsequent impeachment".[12][14]
After the impeachment trial, Curtis declined President Andrew Johnson's offer of the position of
Personal life
Curtis had 12 children and was married three times.[12]
Death and legacy
Curtis died in Newport, Rhode Island, on September 15, 1874. He is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery, 580 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts.[25][26] On October 23, 1874, Attorney General George Henry Williams presented in the Supreme Court the resolutions submitted by the bar on Curtis's death and shared observations on Judge Curtis's defense of President Andrew Johnson in the articles of impeachment against him.[27]
Curtis's daughter, Annie Wroe Scollay Curtis, married (on December 9, 1880) future
They had no children.Published works
- Reports of Cases in the Circuit Courts of the United States (2 vols., Boston, 1854)
- Judge Curtis's Edition of the Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, with notes and a digest (22 vols., Boston: Little Brown & Company, 1855).
- Digest of the Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States from the origin of the court to 1854 Little Brown & Co., (1864).
- Memoir and Writings (2 vols., Boston, 1880), the first volume including a memoir by Curtis's brother, George Ticknor Curtis, and the second "Miscellaneous Writings," edited by the former Justice's son, Benjamin R. Curtis, Jr.[10][24]
See also
References
- .
- ^ "Famous Dissents – Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)". PBS. Archived from the original on September 5, 2012. Retrieved August 20, 2012.
- ^ "Supreme Court Justices Who Are Phi Beta Kappa Members" (PDF). Phi Beta Kappa. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 28, 2011. Retrieved June 5, 2020.
- ^ Harvard Law School (1890). "Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the Law School of Harvard University, 1817–1889". Google Books. Archived from the original on November 9, 2021. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
- ^ Davis, William Thomas (1895). "Bench and Bar of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Volume 1". Google Books. Archived from the original on November 9, 2021. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
- ^ A Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, LL. D.: Memoir (1879), p. 84.
- ^ Commonwealth v. Aves, 18 Pick. 193 (Mass. 1836).
- ^ "The Political Graveyard". Archived from the original on May 1, 2010. Retrieved April 16, 2010.
- ^ "Benjamin Robbins Curtis, Timeline of the Court". Supreme Court Historical Society. Archived from the original on March 20, 2010. Retrieved June 5, 2020.
- ^ a b c d e f g Benjamin R. Curtis, Jr., ed. (October 19, 1879). "Judge Benjamin R. Curtis, A Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, LL.D. With Some of his Professional and Miscellaneous Writings" (PDF). The New York Times. Archived (PDF) from the original on November 9, 2021. Retrieved June 13, 2018.
- JSTOR 362583.
- ^ Public Broadcasting Service. Archivedfrom the original on November 7, 2012. Retrieved May 13, 2012.
- ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter C" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 8, 2011. Retrieved April 7, 2011.
- ^ a b c d "Benjamin Curtis". michaelariens.com. Archived from the original on July 24, 2008. Retrieved June 5, 2020.
- ^ "Cornell Law School, full text of Cooley v. Board of Wardens 53 U.S. 299 (1852)". Archived from the original on November 22, 2013. Retrieved June 27, 2017.
- ^ See, s:Dred Scott v. Sandford/Dissent Curtis
- ^ "Roger B. Taney". michaelariens.com. Archived from the original on May 16, 2008. Retrieved May 26, 2012.
- SSRN 887728.
- ^ Friedman, Leon; Israel, Fred L., eds. (1969). The Justices of the Supreme Court, 1789–1969: Their Lives and Major Opinions. Vol. II. pp. 904–05.
- ^ Dickerman, Albert (January–February 1890). "The Business of the Federal Courts and the Salaries of the Judges". American Law Review. 24 (1): 86.
- ^ Van Tassel, Emily Field; Wirtz, Beverly Hudson; Wonders, Peter. "Why Judges Resign: Influences on Federal Judicial Service, 1789 to 1992" (PDF). National Commission on Judicial Discipline and Removal, Federal Judicial Center. pp. 13, 66, 123, 130. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 1, 2010. Retrieved June 5, 2020.
- ^ Neely Jr., Mark E., Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011, pp. 133-135.
- ^ Williams, Frank J. and Bader, William D., Benjamin R. Curtis: Maverick Lawyer and Independent Jurist Archived September 13, 2021, at the Wayback Machine, Roger Williams University Law Review, Vol. 17, Issue 2, Article 2, p. 387 (Spring 2012).
- ^ a b c Wilson, James Grant. "Benjamin Robbins Curtis". Appletons Encyclopedia.
- ^ Christensen, George A. "Here Lies the Supreme Court: Gravesites of the Justices". Supreme Court Historical Society 1983 Yearbook. Archived from the original on September 3, 2005. Retrieved November 24, 2013.
- S2CID 145227968.
- ^ Williams, George H. (1895). Occasional Addresses. Portland, Oregon: F.W. Baltes and Company. pp. 120–124.
- ^ "Seth Low" by Gerald Kurland, New York, Twayne Publishers, 1971
- Benjamin Robbins Curtis at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
Further reading
- Abraham, Henry J. (1992). Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court (3rd ed.). New York: ISBN 978-0195065572.
- Cushman, Clare (2001). The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789–1995 (2nd ed.). (Supreme Court Historical Society, ISBN 978-1568021263.
- Flanders, Henry. The Lives and Times of the Chief Justices of the United States Supreme Court. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1874 at Google Books.
- Frank, John P. (1995). Friedman, Leon; Israel, Fred L. (eds.). The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions. ISBN 978-0791013779.
- Hall, Kermit L., ed. (1992). The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195058352.
- Huebner, Timothy S.; Renstrom, Peter; coeditor. (2003) The Taney Court, Justice Rulings and Legacy. City: ABC-Clio Inc. ISBN 978-1576073681.
- Leach, Richard H. "Benjamin Robins Curtis, Judicial Misfit". The New England Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Dec., 1952), pp. 507–523 (article consists of 17 pages) Published by: The New England Quarterly, Inc. Archived August 19, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
- Leach, Richard H. Benjamin R. Curtis: Case Study of a Supreme Court Justice (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1951).
- Lewis, Walker (1965). Without Fear or Favor: A Biography of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
- Martin, Fenton S.; Goehlert, Robert U. (1990). The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Books. ISBN 978-0871875549.
- Simon, James F. (2006) Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President's War Powers (Paperback) New York: ISBN 978-0743298469.
- Urofsky, Melvin I. (1994). The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: ISBN 978-0815311768.
External links
- Fox, John, 'The First Hundred Years, Biographies of the Robes, Benjamin Robinson Curtis. Public Broadcasting Service.
- New Publications, Judge Benjamin R. Curtis, A Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, LL.D. With Some of his Professional and Miscellaneous Writings, Edited by his son, Benjamin R. Curtis, (October 19, 1879). The New York Times.