Joseph Story - Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court

Justice Joseph Story wrote the opinion which freed the Amistad captives. Who was he? In addition to his famous opinion, he was a leading American jurist who wrote about the law in a way that everyone could understand. Even his critics expressed admiration for his writing skills.

The following information about Justice Story, and the case of United States v. Amistad, is from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law website:

Joseph Story was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts in 1779. He graduated from Harvard in 1798, second in his class. He was admitted to the bar in 1801. From 1805 to 1811, Story served in the state legislature, Congress, and as Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representative. His decision to get out of politics rested largely on his personal belief that allegiance to a particular party required too much sacrifice of opinions and feelings. At age 32 Story was appointed to the Supreme Court by James Madison.

Despite Story’s personal feelings on slavery (“unnecessary, unjust, and inhuman [and] repugnant to the general principles of justice and humanity”; “repugnant to...the dictates on natural religion, the obligations of good faith and morality and the eternal maxims of social justice.”), he often felt compelled to uphold slavery in his rulings. When possible, however, he would find ways to narrow its application. Such a possibility existed in the case [of] United States v. Amistad ...

Story’s impact on the evolution of law in America reaches far beyond his Supreme Court decisions. He wrote eleven volumes [of] commentary on various branches of American law. His frequent critic, Olliver Wendell Holmes, conceded that Story had “done more than any other English-speaking man in this century to make the law luminous and easy to understand.”

Justice Story lived until 1845. When he died, people remembered him as the country's greatest jurist.