Joseph Story (18 September 1779 – 10 September 1845) was a member of the US House of Representatives (DR-MA 2) from 23 May 1808 to 4 March 1809 (succeeding Jacob Crowninshield and preceding Benjamin Pickman Jr.) and as an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court from 3 February 1812 to 10 September 1845 (succeeding William Cushing and preceding Levi Woodbury). He was a conservative justice whose service on the Supreme Court reshaped American law to protect property rights.
Biography[]
Joseph Story was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts in 1779, and he graduated from Harvard in 1798 and became a lawyer in Salem in 1801. He served in the State House from 1805 to 1808 and in the US House of Representatives from 1808 to 1809, and he led the effort to repeal Thomas Jefferson's embargo against France and Britain. He returned to the State House after leaving the US Congress, and the 32-year-old Story was chosen by President James Madison to serve on the US Supreme Court, making him the youngest Supreme Court justice in history. He was known as a "Statesman of the Old Republic" who tried to be above democracy by shaping the law in accordance with the republicanism of Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall and the Whigs of the 1830s under Daniel Webster. Story criticized the Jacksonians' oppression of property rights when popular majorities began to restrict and erode the property rights of the minority of rich men. He was best remembered for reading the decision of United States v. The Amistad, which led to the return of the enslaved Africans to freedom in Africa. He died in 1845.