Benjamin Robbins Curtis

US Supreme Court justice from 1851 to 1857

"Justice Curtis" redirects here. For other uses, see Justice Curtis (disambiguation) .

Benjamin Robbins Curtis (November 4, 1809 – September 15, 1874) was an American lawyer and judge who served as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1851 to 1857. Curtis was the only Whig justice of the Supreme Court, and he was the first Supreme Court justice to have a formal law degree . He is often remembered as one of the two dissenters in the Supreme Court's infamous 1857 decision _Dred Scott v. Sandford _.

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

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Curtis was born November 4, 1809, in Watertown, Massachusetts , the son of Lois Robbins and Benjamin Curtis, the captain of a merchant vessel . Young Curtis attended common school in Newton and beginning in 1825 Harvard College , where he won an essay writing contest in his junior year. At Harvard, he became a member of the Porcellian Club . He graduated in 1829, and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa . He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1832.

First private practice

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Admitted to the Massachusetts bar later that year, Curtis began his legal career. In 1834, he moved to Boston and joined the law firm of Charles P. Curtis, where he developed expertise in admiralty law and also became known for his familiarity with patent law .

In 1836, Curtis participated in the Massachusetts "freedom suit " of _Commonwealth v. Aves _ as one of the attorneys who unsuccessfully defended a slaveholding father. When New Orleans resident Mary Slater went to Boston to visit her father, Thomas Aves, she brought with her a young slave girl about six years of age, named Med. While Slater fell ill in Boston, she asked her father to take care of Med until she (Slater) recovered. The Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and others sought a writ of _habeas corpus _ against Aves, contending that Med became free by virtue of her mistress's having brought her voluntarily into Massachusetts. Aves responded to the writ, answering that Med was his daughter's slave, and that he was holding Med as his daughter's agent.

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 . 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."

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

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.

Supreme Court service

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Portrait of Benjamin R. Curtis

Curtis received a recess appointment to the United States Supreme Court on September 22, 1851, by President Millard Fillmore , filling the vacancy caused by the death of Levi Woodbury . Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster persuaded Fillmore to nominate Curtis to the Supreme Court, and was his primary sponsor. Formally nominated on December 11, 1851, Curtis was confirmed by the United States Senate on December 20, 1851, and received his commission the same day. Curtis was the earliest serving Supreme Court Justice to have been born in the 19th century. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1854.

He was the first Supreme Court Justice to have earned a law degree from a law school. His predecessors had either "read law " (a form of apprenticeship in a pract

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