John Blair

(b. Williamsburg, Va., 1732; d. Williamsburg, 31 Aug. 1800; interred Bruton Parish churchyard, Williamsburg), associate justice, 1789–1795. The son of John and Mary Munro Blair, John Blair studied law at the Middle Temple in London in 1755–1756 after graduating from William and Mary College with honors in 1754. In 1756 he returned to Virginia and commenced a successful law practice before the General Court in Williamsburg. From 1765 to 1770 he served in the House of Burgesses, where he opposed Patrick Henry's Stamp Act resolutions in 1765, but favored economic boycotts of English imports in 1769–1770. Although he served as clerk of the Governor's Council from 1770 to 1775, he supported the revolutionary movement. A joint session of the legislature elected him to the newly constituted state General Court in 1777 and in 1779 he was chosen chief justice of that tribunal. In 1780 the legislature elected him chancellor of the High Court of Chancery. He also served as a member of Virginia's first Court of Appeals, which was organized in May 1779. While on the latter tribunal he and one other judge declared in Commonwealth of Virginia v. Caton et al. (1782) that the court had the power to declare invalid an unconstitutional act of the legislature, one of the first expressions of judicial review.

Perhaps because of Blair's distinguished judicial service and his support, as a delegate to the Philadelphia and ratifying conventions, of the new Constitution, George Washington, on 24 September 1789, nominated him to be one of the original six members of the United States Supreme Court. The Senate confirmed him two days later. Justice Blair's most significant opinion came in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), delivered seriatim in support of the Court's ruling that Article III, section 2 of the United States Constitution entitled a citizen of one state to sue another state in a federal circuit court. The strongest point in Blair's opinion dealt with the assertion that Article III only contemplated that a state would appear in federal court as a plaintiff. Clearly that argument failed, he wrote, when one understood that Article III also conferred jurisdiction on the federal judiciary in controversies between two states, one of which had to be a defendant. (See Judicial Power and Jurisdiction.) Georgia refused to appear before the Court or to honor its decision. Congress subsequently proposed and the states ratified the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution, which overruled Chisholm v. Georgia.

Blair participated in perhaps his most significant opinion while sitting on the United States Circuit Court (required of Supreme Court justices until after the Civil War). In Hayburn's Case (1792), Blair and his two colleagues (James Wilson and Richard Peters) became the first federal judges to hold an act of Congress unconstitutional when they ruled that a federal statute requiring circuit courts to act as pension commissions violated the separation of powers doctrine and the spirit of judicial independence.

Much of what little other business the Supreme Court transacted during Blair's tenure concerned technical rulings on admiralty and prize law, with which he was in accord. Pleading failing health, he resigned from the Court on 25 October 1795 and retired to his home in Williamsburg. His wife, Jean Balfour, had died four years earlier.

— Robert M. Ireland

• Born: 1732, Williamsburg, Va.
• Education: College of William and Mary, B.A., 1754; studied law at Middle Temple, London, 1755–56
• Previous government service: Virginia House of Burgesses, 1766–70; clerk, Virginia Governor's Council, 1770–75; Virginia Constitutional Convention, 1776; Virginia Governor's Council, 1776; judge, Virginia General Court, 1777–78; chief justice, Virginia General Court, 1779; judge, first Virginia Court of Appeals, 1780–89; Constitutional Convention, 1787; judge, Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, 1789
• Appointed by President George Washington Sept. 24, 1789, as one of the original members of the U.S. Supreme Court
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Sept. 26, 1789, by a voice vote; resigned Oct. 25, 1795
• Died: Aug. 31, 1800, Williamsburg, Va.

John Blair, Jr., was a member of a prominent Virginia family. He was an outstanding political leader of colonial Virginia and after 1776 continued his career of public service in the new state of Virginia. He participated in the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1776 and the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787. He was one of three Virginians who signed the U.S. Constitution.

In recognition of his outstanding career as a political leader and Virginia state judge, George Washington appointed Blair to be one of the original six members of the U.S. Supreme Court. Blair's most important opinion was written in support of the Court's ruling in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793). In this decision, the Court ruled that Article 3, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution gave a citizen of one state the right to sue another state in a federal court. This decision was overturned in 1795 by the 11th Amendment to the Constitution.

Justice Blair resigned from the Court on January 27, 1796. He retired to his home in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he died in 1800.

See also Chisholm v. Georgia

1732-1800.

American jurist who was a member of the Constitutional Convention (1787) and served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1789-1796).

Jr.

John Blair, Jr., was among the original members of the U.S. Supreme Court. Nominated by President George Washington, Blair began his term as an associate justice shortly after the Court's establishment on February 2, 1790. Considered a fair-minded, incorruptible jurist, he remained on the bench for six years.

Blair was born in 1732 into a wealthy, well-established Virginia family. His parents were John Blair, Sr., a public official with important political connections, and Mary Munro (or Monro) Blair, whose father was a rector in Virginia's St. John's Parish. In 1754, Blair graduated from the College of William and Mary (founded by his great-uncle), and he then studied law at Oxford's Middle Temple, in London.

In 1756 Blair returned to Virginia with his Scottish wife, Jean Balfour, and began a successful law practice in Williamsburg. He served in the House of Burgesses as a representative of William and Mary from 1766 to 1770. (The House of Burgesses was a colonial assembly of elected officials and the governor.) He served as clerk of the governor's council from 1770 to 1775. Blair attended the Virginia Constitutional Convention and the Virginia Privy Council in 1776. (The Privy Council was an advisory group to the English monarchy.)

Before his ascension to the U.S. Supreme Court, Blair performed judicial duties for various state courts. He became a judge on the newly established Virginia General Court in 1778. In 1780, he became chancellor of the high court of chancery and was appointed to Virginia's first court of appeals.

In the 1782 chancery case Commonwealth v. Caton, 8 Va. (4 Call) 5, Blair concluded that courts were entitled to review state legislation and to invalidate any laws found unconstitutional. The legal concept of judicial review— whereby the courts examine legislative acts and determine their constitutionality—was later embraced fully by the U.S. Supreme Court, in the landmark case Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 2 L. Ed. 60 (1803).

In 1787 Blair served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Soon afterward he was appointed to the Virginia Court of Appeals. Blair received his greatest judicial honor when President Washington nominated him, along with five other men, to the first High Court on September 24, 1789. (At the time, only six justices sat on the Supreme Court. By 1869 the number had risen to nine.) Blair was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on September 26, 1789.

As an associate justice, Blair took part in Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. 419, 1 L. Ed. 440 (1793), the Supreme Court's first major opinion. The issue before the Court was state sovereignty and whether a citizen of one state could sue another state in federal court over a disputed claim. The Supreme Court ruled that under Article III, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution, a citizen of one state could indeed sue another state in federal court.

Many states decried the outcome of Chisholm, fearing lawsuits that would lead to economic disaster. Four years after the decision was handed down, Congress ratified the Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited citizens of one state from suing another state without the consent of the defendant state. The amendment in effect overturned Chisholm.

Until the 1860s, U.S. Supreme Court justices sat on a circuit court as well as the High Court. In Hayburn's Case, 2 U.S. 408, 1 L. Ed. 436 (1792), Blair broke new ground as a federal appeals judge by ruling that a congressional act ordering circuit judges to serve as pension commissioners was unconstitutional. Blair noted that the supervision of a federal pension plan was not a judicial duty. He ruled that the designation of circuit judges as administrators violated the separation-of-powers doctrine.

Blair retired from the High Court on January 27, 1796, citing the stress of serving on both the Supreme Court and the circuit court, which in Blair's case stretched from New Jersey to Virginia. He died in his native Williamsburg at age sixty-eight, in 1800.