Benjamin Robbins Curtis

CURTIS, BENJAMIN ROBBINS

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 nominominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President MILLARD FILLMORE.
During his brief tenure on the U.S. 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 U.S. 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 14 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. Although 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.

FURTHER READINGS
Curtis, Benjamin R., ed. 2002. A Memoir of Benjamin Robbins
Curtis, LL.D.: With Some of His Professional and
Miscellaneous Writing. Union, N.J: Lawbook Exchange.
Maltz, Earl M. 1996. “The Unlikely Hero of Dred Scott: Benjamin
Robbins Curtis and the Constitutional Law of
Slavery.” Cardozo Law Review 17 (May).