William Johnson (judge)

William Johnson Jr. (December 27, 1771 – August 4, 1834) was an American attorney, state legislator, and judge from South Carolina. He served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1804 to 1834 after previously serving in the South Carolina House of Representatives. Johnson was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Thomas Jefferson. He was the first Jeffersonian Republican member of the Supreme Court and the second Justice from the state of South Carolina. During his tenure, he restored the act of delivering seriatim opinions on the court. He has been nicknamed the "first dissenter" for the large number of dissenting opinions he delivered.

William Johnson
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
In office May 7, 1804 – August 4, 1834
Nominated by	Thomas Jefferson
Preceded by	Alfred Moore
Succeeded by	James Wayne
Speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives
In office 1798–1800
Preceded by	Robert Barnwell
Succeeded by	Theodore Gaillard
Personal details
Born	(1771-12-27)December 27, 1771 Charleston, South Carolina, British America
Died	August 4, 1834(1834-08-04) (aged 62) New York City, New York, U.S.
Political party	Democratic-Republican
Spouse(s)	Sarah Bennett (1794–1834)
Education	Princeton University (BA)

Early life

Johnson was born in Charleston, South Carolina to William Johnson Sr., a blacksmith and supporter of the American Revolution who later on represented Charleston in the general assembly. During the Revolution, Johnson's father was among the patriots deported to St. Augustine, Florida by British commander Sir Henry Clinton.[1] His mother, Sarah Johnson, née Nightingale, was also a revolutionary. She was known to quilt "her petticoats with cartridges" and convey them "to her husband in the trenches" during the Siege of Charleston.[1][2]

Johnson was fourteen in the summer of 1787 when delegates met at the Constitutional Convention. According to one Supreme Court historian "nothing shaped Johnson’s habits of mind more powerfully than the experience of revolution."[3]^:118

In 1790, William Johnson graduated from Princeton University.[4] Three years later in 1793 he passed the bar after tutelage under Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.[5] Johnson was an adherent of the Democratic-Republican Party, and represented Charleston in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1794 to 1800. In his last term, from 1798 to 1800, he served as Speaker of the House.[4] In 1799, Johnson helped pass a bill to reorganize the state judiciary. In that same year, he was also appointed an associate justice of the state Court of General Sessions and Common Pleas and left the House.[6]

In 1794, he married Sarah Bennett, the sister of Thomas Bennett, Jr., who later served as Governor of South Carolina. Johnson and Bennett were close friends. Johnson and his wife named their son Thomas Bennett in honor of him.[7] They had eight children together, six of which survived. They also adopted two refugees from Santo Domingo.[3]^:116 In 1808, Johnson constructed a 2½ story Charleston single house home on Rutledge Avenue.[8]

The William Johnson House on Rutledge Avenue in Charleston, South Carolina.

Supreme Court career

On March 22, 1804 President Thomas Jefferson nominated Johnson to be an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, as the successor of Alfred Moore. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 7, 1804, and received his commission the same day. He was the first of Jefferson's three appointments to the court, and was selected for sharing Jefferson's political philosophy. Johnson was the first member of the Court who was not a Federalist.

In his years on the Court, Johnson developed a reputation as a frequent and articulate dissenter from the Federalist majority. While Chief Justice John Marshall was frequently able to steer the opinions of most of the justices, Johnson demonstrated an independent streak. Johnson restored the practice of delivering seriatim opinions and from 1805 through 1833, he wrote nearly half of the Supreme Court's dissenting opinions.[6][9] For this reason, he has been nicknamed the "first dissenter."[10][11]

During this time, only two of Johnson's cases could be considered major cases (US v. Hudson and Goodwin in 1812, and Mechanics Bank of Alexandria v. Bank of Columbia in 1820).[3]^:119 For the next 13 years after Johnson has written the majority opinion for his last major case, his dissents increase and accumulate.[3]^:119

Gilchrist v. Collector of Charleston (1808)

Following the Chesapeake–Leopard affair in 1807, President Thomas Jefferson enacted the Embargo Act which "expressly granted discretion to the state port collectors to detain any ship that appeared to be violating, or attempting to violate, the embargo."[12] In 1808, shipowner Adam Gilchrist filed a mandamus action with the circuit court after his ship was detained following the direction of Secretary of Treasury Albert Gallatin. In Gilchrist v. Collector of Charleston (1808), Johnson, presiding over the court, ruled that "the collector’s actions would not be justified by Gallatin’s letter because in the embargo act Congress did not sanction the President (or the Department of Treasury) with the discretion to detain ships."[13]

The case resulted in immediate backlash.[14] While the Federalist press celebrated the decision, it remained unpopular with the majority of citizens. Between July and October 1808, Johnson publicly debated the decision with Attorney General Caesar Augustus Rodney in a series of letters published in Charleston newspapers. Ultimately, the Jefferson administration believed that the circuit court did not have the right to enforce a writ of mandamus. However, the case remains an important yet often forgotten judicial landmark, which helped establish judicial independence.[14][6][15]

Johnson was nominated for Collector of the Port of Charleston on January 23, 1819, but chose to remain on the Court.[16][6]

Denmark Vesey rebellion and the Negro Seaman's Act of 1822

Following the closed trial of Denmark Vesey and his co-conspirators, Johnson wrote a letter to the Charleston Courier in June 1822 detailing an account of another previously purported slave rebellion along the border of Georgia and South Carolina. The rebellion Johnson cited had turned out to be only hearsay and resulted in the murder of an innocent man.[7] Johnson claimed he believed the story "contained an useful moral, and might check the causes of agitation which were then operating upon the public mind" in Charleston.[17]

Governor Thomas Bennett also criticized the proceedings for being unfair due to the fact that the trials were held privately and the accused were not present when witnesses testified. The criticism from both Governor Bennett and Justice Johnson outraged members of the court. The court published a rebuttal in the Charleston Courier in July 1822 and the arrests and executions more than doubled.[7][18]

Following Denmark Vesey's arrest and trial, the South Carolina legislature amended the Negro Seaman's Act of 1820 to remove the exception for "free negro or mulatto seamen" from being temporarily arrested and imprisoned while their ship ported.[16] Johnson feared that the case would lead to creditor-ship owners leaving free seamen in jails to avoid paying wages as well as lead to other bans based on racial classification. In the case of Elkison v. Deliesseline (1822), Johnson, presiding over his duties on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, found that "the transfer of commerce and treaty powers to the national government eliminated state authority to enact conflicting legislation" which invalidated the statute[19] It was the first time since 1789 that a federal court invalidated state legislature because of its conflict with the commerce clause.[16]

Judicial views

Johnson was a pioneer of judicial restraint and believed that the legislature and executive branch had a "superior competency and fitness" to deal with evolving problems. His jurisprudence relied on the idea of personal sovereignty enforced by legislation. While he believed an independent judiciary was important, he also believed that the legislature had the right to control the courts in order to protect its own sovereignty. Johnson laid out his views on legal construction, the process by which an ambiguous word or phrase in a statute is determined, in his opinion in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), which stated that: "I have never found much benefit resulting from the inquiry, whether the whole, or any part of it, is to be construed strictly or liberally. The simple, classical, precise, yet comprehensive language in which it is couched, leaves, at most, but very little latitude for construction." [20][10]

According to one historian, Johnson "valued commonsense argument, factual and doctrinal accuracy, solid annotation, and full disclosure of the circumstances of the case."[3]^:120

Career as author and later life

In 1822 Johnson authored the two-volume Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene, a comprehensive work about the major general in the Continental Army who played a vital role in the defeat of the British during the American Revolution.[21] The volume was ultimately a financial and critical failure at the time. One contemporary critic ridiculed it by stating that the book had a "poor developed arraignment of topics, an improper use of obscene sentences, and a dismal failure in its use of affected language."[6] However, the historian Craig Newton in 1964 identified Johnson's volumes as a part of the historiography of South Carolina and stated that Johnson "spoke not only for the more competent biographers and historians but also for all others diligent in the preservation of the sources of the Revolution..."[22] Several other historians have theorized that Johnson's political attachment to Jefferson was due in part to the power of Jefferson's recommendation and introduction to publishers.[3]^:122 In the only surviving note in Andrew Jackson's correspondence which mentions Justice William Johnson, Jackson suggests Johnson was "interested mainly in literary fame and so could not be trusted to write a friend’s biography."[3]^:130

On August 4, 1834, Johnson died in Brooklyn, New York, following particularly painful surgery on his jaw. Johnson had been told the surgery would likely kill him beforehand however he opted to proceed with the procedure. It has often been reported that he was buried in the churchyard of St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where a large statue of him remains. However, the church does not have record of him ever being interred there.[23]

See also

• United States Supreme Court cases during the Marshall Court

References

1. Johnson, Bradley T. "The Memoir of Jane Claudia Johnson." Southern Historical Society Papers, volume XXIX, 1901, pg 34. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=H0I6AQAAMAAJ&dq=Sarah+Johnson,+n%C3%A9e+Nightingale,&source=gbs_navlinks_s
2. William Johnson Jr. at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
3. In Defense of “Public Reason”: Supreme Court Justice William Johnson. Sandra F. Vanburkleo. 2007.
4. "Supreme Court Historical Society". supremecourthistory.org. Retrieved 2020-03-19.
5. O'Neall, J. Belton. (1859). Biographical sketches of the bench and bar of South Carolina. Charleston, S.C.: S. G. Courtenay & Co..
6. Oliver Schroeder, J. (1947). The Life and Judicial Work of Justice William Johnson, Jr. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 95(3), 344. doi:10.2307/3309619
7. Denmark Vesey and His Co-Conspirators Author(s): Michael P. Johnson Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Oct., 2001), pp. 915-976 Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2674506 Accessed: 15-04-2020 00:45 UTC
8. Property Archival Record. Found at https://charleston.pastperfectonline.com/archive/C36BBA18-17B3-4C2E-A471-164347229456. Last utilized on April 15, 2020.
9. Morgan, D. (1944). Mr. Justice William Johnson and the Constitution. Harvard Law Review, 57(3), 328-361. doi:10.2307/1335111
10. Greenberg, I. (1969). JUSTICE WILLIAM JOHNSON: SOUTH CAROLINA UNIONIST, 1823-1830. Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, 36(3), 307-334. Retrieved April 17, 2020, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/27771793
11. Mark R. Killenbeck, William Johnson, the Dog That Did Not Bark?, 62 Vanderbilt Law Review 407 (2019) Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vlr/vol62/iss2/4
12. Goldsmith, W. The Growth of Presidential Power: A Documented History. (1974). p. 470
13. Gilchrist v. Collector of Charleston, 10 F. Cas. 355, 355–56 (C.C.S.C. 1808).
14. Steven T. Voigt, Remembering Gilchrist and the Importance of Federal Executive Restraint, 41 OCULREV, 425-437 (2016).
15. George L. Haskins Law Versus Politics in the Early Years of the Marshall Court, 130 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1 (1981). Available at: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/penn_law_review/vol130/iss1/2
16. Fish, P. Graham., United States. Administrative Office of the United States Courts. (2002). Federal justice in the Mid-Atlantic South: United States courts from Maryland to the Carolinas, 1789-1835. [Washington, DC: Administrative Office of the United States Courts.
17. William Johnson, To the Public of Charleston (Charleston, [early July] 1822)
18. Higginson, Thomas Wentworth (2015-06-18). "The Story of Denmark Vesey". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2020-04-15.
19. Rich, W. J. (2017). Hiding in Plain View: A Path around Sovereign Immunity for State Government Employees. William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, 25(4), 1179–1237.
20. Mr. Justice William Johnson and the Unenviable Dilemma Author(s): A. J. Levin Source: Michigan Law Review, Vol. 42, No. 5 (Apr., 1944), pp. 803-830 Published by: The Michigan Law Review Association Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1283734 Accessed: 16-04-2020 01:24 UTC
21. Johnson, William (1822). Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene. I. Charleston, SC: A. E. Miller. p. title.
22. Newton, Craig A. Three Patterns of Local History: South Carolina Historians, 1779-1830. South Carolina Historical Magazine. Vol. 65, no. 3, p. 147
23. Christensen, George A. "Here Lies the Supreme Court: Gravesites of the Justices". Yearbook 1983 Supreme Court Historical Society. Washington, D.C.: Supreme Court Historical Society (1983): 17–30. Archived from the original on September 3, 2005. Retrieved April 5, 2020 – via Internet Archive.

Further reading

• Morgan, Donald G. (1954). Justice William Johnson, the First Dissenter: The Career and Constitutional Philosophy of a Jeffersonian Judge. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press. pp. 3–54 &168–189. ISBN 0872490602.
• Morgan, Donald G. Justice William Johnson, the First Dissenter: The Career and Constitutional Philosophy of a Jeffersonian Judge. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1954.
• The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica (2015). "William Johnson". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Britannica. Retrieved November 22, 2015.
• Vanburkleo, Sandra F. (2007). "In Defense of "Public Reason":Supreme Court Justice William Johnson."". America: History and Life.
• Abraham, H. J. (2002). "John Marshall's Associate Justices". Journal of Supreme Court History. 27 (3): 286–292. doi:10.1111/1540-5818.00049.
• Abraham, Henry J. (1992). Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506557-3.
• Cushman, Clare (2001). The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789–1995 (2nd ed.). Supreme Court Historical Society, Congressional Quarterly Books. ISBN 1-56802-126-7.
• The Lives and Times of the Chief Justices of the United States Supreme Court]. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1874 at Google Books.
• Frank, John P. (1995). Friedman, Leon; Israel, Fred L. (eds.). The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions. Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 0-7910-1377-4.
• Hall, Kermit L., ed. (1992). The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505835-6.
• Martin, Fenton S.; Goehlert, Robert U. (1990). The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Books. ISBN 0-87187-554-3.
• Urofsky, Melvin I. (1994). The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland Publishing. pp. 590. ISBN 0-8153-1176-1.
• White, G. Edward. The Marshall Court & Cultural Change, 1815–35. Published in an abridged edition, 1991.

External links

• Brief online biography of William Johnson
• Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene

Political offices
Preceded by Robert Barnwell	Speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives 1798–1800	Succeeded by Theodore Gaillard
Legal offices
Preceded by Alfred Moore	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 1804–1834	Succeeded by James Wayne