Benjamin Robbins Curtis

(b. Watertown, Mass., 4 Nov. 1809; d. Newport, R.I., 15 Sept. 1874; interred Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Mass.), associate justice, 1851–1857. Curtis was the son of a Massachusetts ship captain who died on a sea voyage when Curtis was a child. Curtis graduated from Harvard in 1829 and from the law school there in 1832. Shortly thereafter he established a law practice in Boston and became a Whig in politics. It was on the recommendation of then Secretary of State Daniel Webster that President Millard Fillmore appointed Curtis to the high court in 1851.

On the Court, Curtis became known for his participation in two major cases. The first was Cooley v. Board of Wardens (1852), in which he enunciated the doctrine of selective exclusiveness (see Commerce Power). In this commerce clause case, Curtis held for the Court that where the object of regulation is such as to require a uniform national rule, the power to legislate is reserved exclusively to Congress; but where a uniform national rule is not required, the states are constitutionally free to enact their own regulation, unless and until Congress legislates.

Curtis's other major opinion was a dissent in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). Curtis repudiated Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's opinion for the Court by relying upon facts to show that at the time of the ratification of the Constitution, there were African‐American citizens in several states, Northern and Southern (see Race and Racism). There being no federal citizenship clause in the Constitution, Curtis reasoned, the states must have created federal citizens automatically by having conferred state citizenship. Thus, Scott, despite being of African ancestry, could be a citizen within the meaning of Article III of the Constitution.

With respect to congressional control of slavery in federal territories, Curtis cited no fewer than fourteen separate instances in which Congress had legislated with respect to slavery in the territories prior to the Missouri Compromise. Thus, he concluded that by settled practice Congress had had the power to enact the Compromise, and Scott's residence in the areas governed by that congressional legislation had made him a free man.

The rancor engendered by the Dred Scott decision so strained Curtis's relations with his fellow justices that he resigned. He returned to his Boston law practice and, after the Civil War, argued several significant cases before the Court.

His greatest legal contribution, however, came as one of the defense counsels in the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. In that case—and perhaps contrary to the intent of the founders—Curtis was able to convince the Senate that impeachment was exclusively a judicial, not a political, proceeding, a trial of and not a vote of confidence in the president.

Curtis died at the age of sixty‐four; having been married three times, he was the father of twelve children. In his short tenure on the Supreme Court he gave promise of being a great justice. Whether he would have realized that potential had he remained on the Court will never be known. But today the Cooley Rule is the law of the land, and Dred Scott is not.

Bibliography

• Richard H. Leach, Benjamin R. Curtis: Case Study of a Supreme Court Justice (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1951)

— Richard Y. Funston

Benjamin Robbins Curtis (1809-1874) was one of the most able lawyers on the U.S. Supreme Court in the 19th century.

Benjamin Robbins Curtis was born into an old New England family in Watertown, Mass., on Nov. 4, 1809. He graduated second in his class at Harvard in 1829, then took a degree from Harvard Law School. In 1833 he married Eliza Maria Woodward, with whom he had five children. When she died in 1844, he married again and had three more children.

Through the influence of a prominent uncle, Curtis became a partner in a Boston law firm in 1834, remaining until 1851 and becoming one of the leading commercial lawyers in the United States. He was elected to the Massachusetts General Court in 1849 and 1851 and was largely responsible for the Massachusetts Practice Act of 1851, which eliminated many legal abuses. When what was then the New England seat on the U.S. Supreme Court became vacant in 1851, President Millard Fillmore appointed Curtis.

In his first term Curtis's ability to cut to the heart of a problem led to establishing a commonsense interpretation of the commerce clause in Cooley v. Board of Wardens, which allowed states to regulate local commercial matters while not diminishing Congress's power. Another precedent-setting case enabled administrative officers to determine and collect debts without a court order. He was also highly effective in conference, "educating" by persuasion his fellow justices.

Riding the New England circuit, Curtis continued to show concern for law and order and preservation of the Union. Though labeled a "slave-catcher judge" because of his strict enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, he dissented on the precedent-setting Dred Scott case (1852) and wrote a long minority opinion demonstrating that African Americans were U.S. citizens in 1787, that residence in free territory made a man free, and that Congress had complete authority to legislate for the territories, including prohibiting slavery. Misunderstandings with Chief Justice Roger B. Taney over dissemination of these opinions were partly responsible for Curtis's resignation from the Court.

Returning to a lucrative private practice, Curtis argued several important cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. When his second wife died in 1860, he married again. He supported the North in the Civil War but raised important questions about presidential power in a pamphlet critical of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and of suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. He opposed Lincoln's reelection in 1864. When President Andrew Johnson was impeached, Curtis and William M. Evarts defended him before the Senate.

In 1874 Curtis suffered a brain hemorrhage and died at Newport, R.I., on September 15. His course of lectures at Harvard for 1872-1873, Jurisdiction, Practice and Peculiar Jurisprudence of the Courts of the United States, was published in 1880.

Further Reading

There is no modern biography of Curtis. A eulogistic memoir by his brother and a volume of his writings edited by his son were published as A Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, L.L.D., with Some of His Professional and Miscellaneous Writings (2 vols., 1879; repr. 1969). Vincent C. Hopkins, Dred Scott's Case (1951), details Curtis's role in that case. His Court career appears in Leo Pfeffer, This Honorable Court: A History of the United States Supreme Court (1965).

• Born: Nov. 4, 1809, Watertown, Mass.
• Education: Harvard College, A.B., 1829; Harvard Law School, LL.B., 1832
• Previous government service: Massachusetts state representative, 1849–51
• Appointed by President Millard Fill-more as a recess appointment Sept. 22, 1851; replaced Levi Woodbury, who died; nominated by Fillmore Dec. 11, 1851
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Dec. 20, 1851, by a voice vote; resigned Sept. 30, 1857
• Died: Sept. 15, 1874, Newport, R.I.

Benjamin R. Curtis served only six years as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. But his dissent in the Dred Scott case is a lasting monument of the struggle for equal rights by African Americans.

Dred Scott, a slave, brought suit against his master, claiming himself a free man because he had lived in areas that banned slavery. The Court decided against Scott and ruled that he had no right to bring a suit to the federal courts.

Justice Curtis disagreed with every major point of the majority opinion in Scott v. Sandford (1857). He argued that African Americans could be citizens of the United States, although the majority argued that slaves were merely property. If so, they had the right to bring suits to the federal courts. Curtis also held that the federal government had authority under the Constitution to regulate or prevent slavery in territories of the United States. By contrast, Chief Justice Roger Taney's argument for the Court was an attempt to protect slavery against federal government regulation and to deny all constitutional rights to African Americans.

Taney's ideas prevailed in the Dred Scott case, but Curtis won in the long run. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, embodies Curtis's ideas about citizenship and constitutional rights. Today, Taney's opinion in the Dred Scott case is generally viewed as one of the worst decisions in the history of the Court.

Curtis left the Court a few months after the Dred Scott decision. This case caused serious conflict and hostility between Curtis and his associates on the Court. He decided he could no longer work comfortably and cooperatively with Chief Justice Taney and some other justices, and so he resigned.

Curtis returned to the practice of law and continued to attract national attention for his achievements. In 1868, for example, he successfully defended President Andrew Johnson in his impeachment trial. He also argued more than 50 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

See also Scott v. Sandford

Sources

• Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978)

Benjamin Robbins Curtis served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1851 to 1857. A native of Massachusetts, Curtis wrote a famous dissent in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 15 L. Ed. 691 (1857), a case that upheld the legitimacy of slavery and denied free African Americans U.S. citizenship.

Curtis was born in Watertown, Massachusetts, on November 4, 1809. He graduated from Harvard College in 1829 and Harvard Law School in 1832. Curtis established a law practice and became active in the Whig party. In 1851 he was elected to the Massachusetts house of representatives and later that year was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Millard Fillmore.

In his brief tenure on the Supreme Court, Curtis made a lasting impact with his dissent in Dred Scott and his majority opinion in Cooley v. Board of Wardens, 53 U.S. 299, 13 L. Ed. 996 (1851). Curtis was one of two dissenters in Dred Scott, which the majority opinion viewed as the final word on the legal merits of slavery and the issue of citizenship for African Americans. Chief Justice Roger Taney's majority opinion concluded that at the time of the ratification of the Constitution, there were no African American citizens in the United States. Therefore, the Framers never contemplated that African Americans could be federal citizens. Curtis refuted this conclusion, pointing out that there were African American citizens in both northern and southern states at the time of ratification. They were part of the "people of the United States" that the Constitution described. In addition, Curtis stated that "every free person born on the soil of a State, who is a citizen of that State by force of its Constitution or laws, is also a citizen of the United States."

The majority opinion also held that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because Congress did not have the power to legislate policies on slavery in the federal territories. Curtis countered this finding by noting fourteen instances where Congress had legislated on slavery prior to the Missouri Compromise. He concluded that this demonstrated that Congress had the power to regulate slavery in the territories.

In Cooley v. Board of Wardens, Curtis enunciated an enduring principle concerning the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Prior to Cooley, the Supreme Court had failed to resolve the issue of state power to regulate interstate commerce. In his majority opinion, Curtis held that the Commerce Clause did not automatically bar all state regulation in this field. At issue in this case was the constitutionality of a Pennsylvania law requiring ships entering or leaving the port of Philadelphia to hire local harbor pilots. Though this was a regulation of interstate commerce, Curtis upheld the law. He reasoned that the term commerce covered many topics, some requiring national uniformity, others calling for diversity of local control. The distinction between local and national aspects of interstate commerce was a major contribution to constitutional interpretation. Cooley is regarded as one of the most significant Commerce Clause cases of the nineteenth century.

Curtis left the Supreme Court shortly after the Dred Scott decision. The decision so polarized the Court that Curtis did not feel comfortable serving with the other members. He returned to Boston and resumed his law practice.

Curtis was pulled back into the national arena in 1868, when he served as defense counsel at the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. He made a lasting contribution to the theory of impeachment by convincing the Senate that impeachment is a judicial trial, not a political proceeding. This meant that impeachment required evidence of misconduct rather than a finding of no-confidence in the president.

As an author, Curtis gained prominence for his publications Reports of Cases in the Circuit Courts of the United States (1854), Digest of the Decisions of the Supreme Court (1856), and his posthumously published Memoirs (1879).

Curtis died on September 15, 1874.

Benjamin Robbins Curtis
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
In office October 10, 1851 – September 30, 1857
Nominated by	Millard Fillmore
Preceded by	Levi Woodbury
Succeeded by	Nathan Clifford
Born	November 4, 1809(1809-11-04) Watertown, Massachusetts
Died	September 15, 1874 (aged 64) Newport, Rhode Island
Religion	Unitarian, then Episcopalian

Benjamin Robbins Curtis (November 4, 1809 – September 15, 1874) was an American attorney and United States Supreme Court Justice.

Curtis was born in 1809 in Watertown, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1829, Phi Beta Kappa ^[1], attended Harvard Law School and was admitted to the bar in 1832.

Curtis was appointed to the Supreme Court on 22 September 1851 by President Millard Fillmore. He was the first Supreme Court Justice to have actually received a law degree - his predecessors had either "read law" (a form of apprenticeship) or had attended a law school without receiving a degree. He was notable as one of the two dissenters in the Dred Scott case, where he argued against the majority's denial of the slave Scott's bid for emancipation. Curtis resigned in 1857 from the court because of the bitter feelings engendered by the case. In 1868, he served as President Andrew Johnson's lead defense attorney during the impeachment proceedings.

His daughter, Annie Wroe Scollay Curtis, married December 9, 1880 future Columbia University President and New York Mayor, Seth Low.^[2] They had no children.

References

1. ^ Supreme Court Justices Who Are Phi Beta Kappa Members, Phi Beta Kappa website, accessed Oct 4, 2009
2. ^ "Seth Low" by Gerald Kurland, New York, Twayne Publishers, 1971

External links

• Benjamin Robbins Curtis at Find A Grave
• Benjamin Robbins Curtis at PBS

Legal offices
Preceded by Levi Woodbury	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States October 10, 1851 – September 30, 1857	Succeeded by Nathan Clifford

Supreme Court of the United States
The Taney Court Chief Justice: Roger Brooke Taney (1836–1864) 1851–1852: J. McLean | J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | J. McKinley | P.V. Daniel | S. Nelson | R.C. Grier | B.R. Curtis 1853–1857: J. McLean | J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | P.V. Daniel | S. Nelson | R.C. Grier | B.R. Curtis | J.A. Campbell

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