Joseph Story

Joseph Story was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the son of a doctor who had taken part in the Boston Tea Party. He graduated from Harvard, became a lawyer, and served in the Massachusetts legislature and briefly in Congress. In 1811 President James Madison appointed him to the Supreme Court; at thirty-two he remains the youngest justice ever appointed. He served for thirty-four years and became John Marshall's closest ally on the Court. In Martin v. Hunter's Lessee in 1816 he upheld the Supreme Court's power to review state court decisions on federal questions. In the Amistad case of 1841 he wrote the opinion freeing Africans who had seized the slave ship carrying them, holding that they had been illegally kidnapped. In Prigg v. Pennsylvania in 1842, however, he upheld the federal fugitive slave law over a state law. While still on the Court he became the first Dane Professor of Law at Harvard and wrote a series of influential Commentaries, including the three-volume Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. He died in 1845.

Faith: Faith not well documented. Source: Wikipedia