When historian Donald Roper instructed folks he was writing a biography of Smith Thompson, the constant reply, even from constitutional students, was “who’s Smith Thompson?” Roper had a partial reply, albeit one borrowed from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: whereas Chief Justice John Marshall “was nice as a result of he was there,” Thompson “was there however was not nice.” (Holmes had delivered a famously lukewarm tribute to Marshall.) Thompson, as Roper famous, sat on the identical courtroom throughout those self same years, leading to what a distinct historian reasonably unenthusiastically described as a “diligent and unspectacular however above-average efficiency.”
Thompson was born in Dutchess County, New York, in January 1768. His father reportedly collected 1000’s of acres, put cash right into a lead mine, and purchased up confiscated loyalist property, constructing tons within the new capital. Thompson’s father additionally sat in New York’s 1788 ratifying conference, as did his uncle, main Antifederalist Melancton Smith. Thompson graduated from the Faculty of New Jersey (now Princeton College) in 1788, taught briefly, and clerked within the Poughkeepsie workplace of Gilbert Livingston and James Kent. Kent, later an influential authorized authority of the period, was not a fan of Thompson. A long time later, he described him as a clerk who was “a plain, modest, humble, ignorant younger man with slim views and anti-federal politics. His thoughts didn’t broaden and his rules turned liberal very slowly.” (Kent’s resentments might have been influenced by Thompson taking his place as Livingston’s accomplice in 1793 after which marrying Livingston’s daughter the subsequent yr.)
Regardless of his supposed modesty, humility, and ignorance, Thompson received a state meeting seat in 1800, sat within the 1801 state constitutional conference, turned down an appointment as district lawyer, and in 1802 joined the New York Supreme Court docket. He declined the place of mayor of New York in 1807, apparently preferring the safety of life tenure, succeeded Kent as chief justice in 1814, and, over 16 years, wrote roughly 250 opinions. One, In re Waldron, stored a younger lady together with her maternal grandfather rather than her father as a result of the courtroom ought to “principally [] be directed” by “the profit and welfare of the toddler.” (The case was an early occasion of “state courts’ overriding concern [in] the best interests of the children.”)
President James Monroe selected Thompson as his secretary of the Navy in 1818, apparently with no different candidate in thoughts. Monroe then gave him a recess appointment to the Supreme Court docket in September 1823, which Thompson accepted only after concluding that his 1824 presidential hopes had been for naught. Confirmed that December, he didn’t take his seat till Feb. 10, 1824, due to his daughter’s death – at some point after the courtroom completed listening to the landmark case of Gibbons v. Ogden, which held the federal authorities has the authority to manage interstate commerce beneath the commerce clause. Whereas on the courtroom in 1828, Thompson ran for governor of New York and misplaced what one account known as a “caustic campaign.” He was additionally near future President Martin Van Buren, whose fourth son, Smith Thompson Van Buren, was named after Thompson.
On the courtroom, Thompson’s states’ rights convictions often left him on the opposite facet of Marshall, and he was, in Roper’s words, “unwilling to undergo in silent disagreement.” His commerce views had been developed early – on the New York courtroom in Livingston v. Van Ingen, Thompson wrote that sovereign powers not delegated to the federal authorities “are retained by the states,” and in 1837’s New York v. Miln he agreed {that a} state can legislate on topics throughout the commerce powers as long as no act of Congress stands in the best way. In Kendall v. United States, his majority opinion held {that a} courtroom may order an government officer to carry out his obligation – on the lawyer normal’s request, he minimize a passage rejecting the Jacksonian notion {that a} president might act on his personal studying of the Structure.
Maybe his most admired work got here in an 1831 dissent in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, the place Thompson argued that the Cherokee had been an unbiased sovereign nation entitled to be heard (“regardless of their weakened standing”), a view the courtroom agreed with the following year in Worcester v. Georgia. Using circuit in 1839, Thompson ruled that American courts lacked energy over the Amistad homicide and mutiny fees, which arose on a Spanish vessel inside Spanish waters, and he later joined Justice Joseph Story’s 1841 opinion releasing the Amistad’s captives.
Thompson died at age 75 in Poughkeepsie in December 1843. Filling his seat took President John Tyler six nominations and 437 days earlier than Samuel Nelson was confirmed in February 1845. Thompson held a excessive state or federal workplace for greater than 40 consecutive years and will have been the best-credentialed justice to affix the courtroom earlier than the Civil Battle. The Navy named a destroyer for him in 1919.