Gabriel Duvall

US Supreme Court justice from 1811 to 1835

Gabriel Duvall (December 6, 1752 – March 6, 1844) was an American politician and jurist. Duvall was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1811 to 1835, during the Marshall Court . Previously, Duvall was the Comptroller of the Treasury , a Maryland state court judge, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland, and a Maryland state legislator.

Whether Duvall is deserving of the title of "the most insignificant" justice in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court has been the subject of much academic interest, most notably a debate between University of Chicago Law Professors David P. Currie and (now-Judge) Frank H. Easterbrook in 1983. Currie argued that "impartial examination of Duvall's performance reveals to even the uninitiated observer that he achieved an enviable standard of insignificance against which all other justices must be measured." Easterbrook responded that Currie's analysis lacked "serious consideration of candidates so shrouded in obscurity that they escaped proper attention even in a contest of insignificance," and concluded that Duvall's colleague, Justice Thomas Todd , was even more insignificant.

Early and family life

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Gabriel Duvall was born in Prince George's County in the Province of Maryland , as the sixth child of Benjamin Duvall and his wife Susanna Tyler. Gabriel was born and raised on land that would eventually become known as Marietta. Two of his elder brothers died in the American Revolutionary War . Duvall read law to enter the bar in Prince George's County in 1778, and practiced in Anne Arundel and Prince George’s County at least part-time until 1823. In Annapolis, Maryland, he practiced in the Mayor's Court as county prosecutor beginning in 1781, and in Anne Arundel County court beginning in 1783, formally appearing in 600 cases by 1792 according to an archivist's research.

Some uncertainty remains over the spelling of Duvall's name. One scholar noted Supreme Court Reporters Cranch, Wheaton, and Peters uniformly spelled it "Duvall", but Marshall's biographer, Albert Beveridge, insisted on spelling the name with a single "l." Journalist and Supreme Court specialist Irving Lee Dilliard concluded persuasively that the original "DuVal" or "Duval" employed in earlier generations had become "Duvall" before the future justice was born. Later family members used "DuVal".

Gabriel Duvall was an Anglican (Episcopalian after the American Revolutionary War) and maintained pews both at St. Anne's Church, Annapolis, and his family's longstanding parish in Prince George's County, Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Collington , originally a chapel of ease known as Henderson's Chapel for St. Barnabas' Episcopal Church, Leeland . He married twice, first in 1787 to Mary Bryce (d. 1791), daughter of Annapolis sea captain Robert Bryce. They had only one son, Edmund Bryce Duvall (1790–1831). Duvall married his second wife, Jane Gibbon Duvall (1757 – 1834), daughter of sea captain James Gibbon and Mary Gibbon. Widowed, Mary Gibbon ran a boarding house in Philadelphia where her daughter Jane also worked. Gabriel Duvall and other members of Congress stayed at the Gibbons’ boarding house. He met Jane at the boarding house during his federal service in Philadelphia. They married on May 5, 1795, at Christ Church, Philadelphia . Her mother, Mary Gibbon, came to live with them in the Duvall’s D.C. residence during her last years (she died in 1810 and was buried in the Duvall family cemetery at WigWam, a part of Marietta plantation). Jane Duvall died in 1834 and Gabriel Duvall died in 1844, both at Marietta.

The Duvall family enslaved anywhere from nine to forty people at their tobacco plantation, Marietta, between 1783 and 1864, including multiple generations of the Duckett, Butler, Jackson, and Brown families at Marietta.

Career

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Duvall was a clerk for the Maryland Council of Safety (which managed the state militia ) from 1775 to 1777, and for the Maryland House of Delegates from 1777 to 1781.

Duvall served in the American Revolutionary War , first as a mustermaster and commissary of stores in 1776, then as a private in the Maryland militia , where he fought in the Battle of Brandywine and in Morristown, New Jersey .

He was a commissioner to preserve confiscated British property from 1781 to 1782, then a member of Maryland's Governor's Council from 1782 to 1785.

He was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates , serving there from 1787 to 1794. He served one term as a U.S. Representative from the second district of Maryland , from November 11, 1794, to March 28, 1796. He was then Chief Justice of the Maryland General Court from 1796 to 1802, and was the first U.S. Comptroller of the Treasury from 1802 to 1811.

As an attorney, Gabriel Duvall represented more than 120 enslaved men, women, and children who sued in court for their freedom . In this way he established his reputation as a successful lawyer who won nearly 75% of those enslaved people’s petitions for freedom. Paradoxically, Duvall fought against the petition of freedom filed by Thomas and Sarah Butler, whose family Duvall enslaved at Marietta (1805–1831).

Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

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Chief Justice John Marshall

On November 15, 1811, Duvall was nominated by President James Madison to an associate justice seat on the Supreme Court of the United States vacated by fellow Marylander Samuel Chase . Duvall was confirmed by the United States Senate on November 18, 18

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