James Iredell

US Supreme Court justice from 1790 to 1799

This article is about the Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. For his son, the U.S. Senator, see James Iredell Jr.

James Iredell (October 5, 1751 – October 20, 1799) was one of the first justices of the Supreme Court of the United States . He was appointed by President George Washington and served from 1790 until his death in 1799. His son, James Iredell Jr. , was a governor of North Carolina .

Early life

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Coat of Arms of James Iredell

James Iredell was born in Lewes, England , the oldest of five surviving children of Francis Iredell, a Bristol merchant and his wife, the former Margaret McCulloch, of Dublin, Ireland. The failure of his father's business (and health) impelled James to emigrate to the Colonies in 1767 at the age of 17. Relatives assisted him in obtaining a position in the customs service as deputy collector, or comptroller, of the port of Edenton , North Carolina .

While working at the customs house, Iredell read law under Samuel Johnston (later governor of North Carolina ), began the practice of law and was admitted to the bar in 1771. The grandson of a clergyman, he was a devout Anglican throughout his life and his writings display an interest in spirituality and metaphysics beyond a simple attachment to organized religion.

In 1773, Iredell married Johnston's sister Hannah and the two had four children after twelve childless years. In 1774 he was made collector for the port.

Roles in the Revolution

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Although employed by the British government, Iredell was a strong supporter of independence and the revolution. In 1774, he wrote To the Inhabitants of Great Britain where he laid out arguments opposing the concept of parliamentary supremacy over America. This essay established Iredell, then 23, as the most influential political essayist in North Carolina at that time. His treatise _Principles of an American Whig _ predates and echoes themes and ideas of the Declaration of Independence .

After the revolution began, Iredell helped organize the court system of North Carolina, and was elected a judge of the superior court in 1778. His career advanced through a number of political and judicial posts in the state, including that of attorney general from 1779 to 1781. In 1787 the state assembly appointed him commissioner and charged him with compiling and revising the laws of North Carolina. His work was published in 1791 as Iredell's Revisal.

Following the Revolution, financial limitations barred his being a delegate to the Philadelphia convention, he corresponded regularly with the North Carolina delegates. Iredell was a leader of the Federalists in North Carolina, and a strong supporter of the proposed Constitution . In the 1788 convention at Hillsborough , he argued unsuccessfully in favor of its adoption. Iredell was the floor leader for the Federalists (North Carolina later ratified the Constitution after Congress amended it through the addition of the Bill of Rights ). After the convention failed to ratify the Constitution, he continued to promote it, joining William R. Davie (the later founder of the University of North Carolina ), to publish the convention debates at their own expense for distribution across the state.

Supreme Court Justice

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On February 8, 1790, President George Washington nominated Iredell as an associate justice on the newly established United States Supreme Court , and on February 10, he was confirmed by the United States Senate . He was sworn into office on May 12.

The case load of the first Supreme Court was light. In fact, the court did not hear its first case until 1791 when it decided _West v. Barnes _. The decision was unanimous, but Iredell requested that Congress change the harsh statute governing the West decision as explained in his seriatim decision. The Justices gathered to hear arguments only twice a year, and there are only a handful of opinions written by Justice Iredell in his years on the court. Of them, two of the most significant are:

• _Chisholm v. Georgia _ (1793): At issue was whether the citizens of one state (South Carolina ) could sue another state (Georgia ) for repayment of Revolutionary War bills. Iredell was the lone dissent from the majority opinion that held that a state may be sued in federal court without its consent to the suit.
• _Calder v. Bull _ (1798): At issue was whether an act of the Connecticut legislature violated the Constitution because it was an _ex post facto _ law, forbidden pursuant to Article I, Section 9, Clause 3.

In the Chisholm case, public and political opinion agreed with Iredell against the other Justices. The outcry and strong reaction of people against the Chisholm decision would lead to its reversal by the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment in 1795.

In the unanimous decision in Calder, the Court held that the Clause applied to criminal cases only, deciding that the legislature's act was not unconstitutional. More importantly, Calder raised the question of whether "principles of natural justice " constituted law. Iredell's opinion indicated that only those actions of a state that explicitly violated a textual provision of the Constitution could be declared void. He stated, "The principles of natural justice are regulated by no fixed standard; the ablest and the purest men have differed upon the subject; and all the court could properly say, in such an event, would be, that the legislature (possessed of an equal r

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