Friday’s A Nearer Look is often a judicial biography. This week we cowl Justice Henry Baldwin, who served on the courtroom from 1830 till 1844.
Justice Henry Baldwin brought on bother each early and late in his life. At Yale, he “found the lectures droll and misbehaved frequently,” whereas on the Supreme Court docket he grew so erratic that his colleague Justice Joseph Story deemed him “partially deranged always.” (This isn’t to say his near-death duel or unprecedented variety of dissents whereas on the often-unanimous Marshall courtroom.)
Baldwin was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in January 1780. Certainly one of his half-brothers signed the Structure and later represented Georgia within the Home for the primary by means of fifth Congresses and within the Senate throughout the sixth by means of ninth. Baldwin graduated from Yale in 1797, though considered one of his classmates described him as a “lightheaded boy, who neither aimed toward, nor attained to, a lot distinction as a scholar,” earlier than attending Litchfield Regulation Faculty. He then clerked for Alexander Dallas, the Supreme Court docket’s first unofficial reporter of selections. (The courtroom was then positioned in Philadelphia.)
In 1799, Baldwin went to Pittsburgh (initially on his method to go to his brother), and there based a regulation apply and got here to co-own a newspaper. Reportedly spurred by politics, Baldwin fought a duel and nearly died – in keeping with Oyez, he was saved by a “silver greenback in his jacket pocket” that deflected the bullet. Through the Conflict of 1812, Baldwin sat on Pittsburgh’s Public Safety Council and by 1816, he had been dubbed “the Pride of Pittsburgh.” He then received a Home seat for Pennsylvania, the place he chaired the Committee on Manufactures and was a proponent of excessive tariffs (these protectionist views received him one other nickname, “Father of the American System”). However Baldwin’s profession was most aided by his protection of then-Gen. Andrew Jackson’s conduct within the Seminole Conflict; Baldwin argued that the boys Jackson had killed “weren’t our residents, not certain by our legal guidelines, [and] not entitled to our safety.”
Baldwin then campaigned for Jackson in 1828 and anticipated to be made Secretary of the Treasury in return however didn’t obtain the place. He refused the three overseas missions Jackson supplied as a substitute and wrote to an editor that he was valued about as a lot as “a candle-snuffer at a court-house,” or “a mere passing publish, towards which each pet of the social gathering raises his leg.” After Justice Bushrod Washington died in 1829, Jackson nominated Baldwin to the courtroom. The Senate confirmed him 41-2 two days later, with both “no” votes solid by South Carolinians. (South Carolina was generally towards Baldwin’s pro-tariff place.)
Baldwin fell out of affection with the courtroom in his very first year, telling Jackson he wished to resign, however Jackson satisfied him to remain. In 1831 alone, he dissented seven occasions, greater than every other justice on the Marshall courtroom. One of many seven was his “spirited dissent” in Ex parte Crane, the place he argued that the Supreme Court docket didn’t have the facility to subject writs ordering decrease federal courts to take a selected motion.
In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, which held that the courtroom didn’t have jurisdiction to listen to the case for the reason that Cherokee Nation was a “home dependent nation[]” and as such couldn’t sue Georgia, Baldwin additionally wrote individually, stating that “the judicial energy can not divest the States of rights of sovereignty,” a place that sided with Georgia and Jackson’s push for Indian elimination. (That stated, Baldwin wasn’t fully in Jackson’s pocket; he repeatedly urged Legal professional Normal Roger Taney to advise the president towards vetoing the nationwide financial institution’s rechartering invoice.)
On slavery, Baldwin was the lone dissenter in United States v. The Amistad (the place the courtroom held that as a result of a bunch of Africans had been illegally kidnapped, they have been free and entitled to their liberty), and in 1841’s Groves v. Slaughter, he argued that the Structure regarded slaves as property quite than individuals.
In 1833, Baldwin was hospitalized for “incurable lunacy” and absent for that time period. In Might 1833, his colleague Story wrote to a circuit choose that “I’m positive he can’t be sane.” Regardless of this, Baldwin returned the next yr and served 11 extra years on the courtroom till his demise in 1844. Upon returning, Baldwin apparently wrote a collection of incoherent authorized opinions, intentionally ignored grammar in his writing, and had violent outbursts. A courtroom reporter additionally famous that five completely different folks had referred to as the justice “loopy” on the identical day. Buddies additional reported monetary points (Baldwin had filed for chapter early in his tenure) and that he appeared overworked.
Baldwin died in Philadelphia in April 1844, a week after struggling a stroke. He was reportedly so in debt that his pals needed to acquire cash to bury him. In accordance with Justia, he left “scant impact on the law,” though he has been credited with establishing written dissents as a courtroom apply.