Joseph Story

But to me his greatness chiefly consists in that balance of mind which enabled him to recognize when an old order had passed away, and to perceive how a new order could be best introduced.

Joseph Story was ten years old in seventeen eighty-nine when the Constitution was adopted.

His earliest impressions, therefore, were of the Confederation, and I know no better description of the interval just subsequent to the peace of seventeen eighty-three than is contained in a few lines in his dissenting opinion in the Charles River Bridge case.

Quote, In order to entertain a just view of this subject, we must go back to that period of general bankruptcy and distress and difficulty.

If the state cared to resume its power of taxation, it must buy the grant back and the citizens of New Jersey must pay for their improvidence.

Seven years later, in 1810, Marshall may perhaps be said to have reached the culmination of his career, for then he carried his moral standard to a breaking strain.

But, though his theory broke down, perhaps the most striking evidence of his wonderful intellectual superiority is that he convinced the Democrat Joseph Story, a man who had been nominated by Madison to oppose him and of undoubted strength of character, of the soundness of his thesis.

In 1769, King George III incorporated certain trustees of Dartmouth College.

It's also not in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence.

You take someone like Justice Joseph Story.

I mean, he is as clear as an 18th century British jurist about the nature of divine law underlying even constitutional law.

I'm not saying that's not a live debate in America.

Would you like to join me? That's perfectly fine.

but that oath had a meaning and a purpose Joseph Story served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court from 1812 until his death in 1845.

He was at 32 years old, the youngest justice ever appointed to the court.

But he's best known for his commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, published in 1833, which was and is a cornerstone of American jurisprudence.

It doesn't do any of that.

The problem is you have people like Joseph Story and John Marshall and others, the nationalists after this thing is finally ratified, through the bench codifying the fears of the anti-Federalists.

Joseph Story's commentaries on the Constitution flipped the entire Constitution on his head.

Because he would say, Patrick Henry said this, this is true.

He uses the anti-Federalists, in a way, to defend the Constitution.

They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire.

And I have known as many as 22 of them to die in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold, and exposure.

Among this number was the beautiful Christian wife of Chief John Ross.

This noble-hearted woman died a martyr to childhood, giving her only blanket for the protection of a sick child.

Background In the early 1800s, American expansion reached a fever pitch.

Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee were coveted by settlers due to their fertile lands and a gold rush that was so profitable, a single prospector could yield pounds of gold in a single day.

Other factors, such as the expansion of chattel slavery and the invention of the cotton gin, fueled the expansion and made population growth within the states exponential.

These developments coincided with the prevailing ideology of Manifest Destiny, which envisioned westward expansion of the United States as divinely ordained.

And I think it's very important that this issue be laid out, and I'm gonna make sure it is.

Joseph Story, you know, you can use your AI backed up by data centers to look more deeply into this.

I see a little bit of, uh, change going on in some of these politicians, conservatives who were turning into pseudo-conservatives, they seem to be making their way back.

On these data centers, now it's more local control.

I also want to say that if you look at the founders and even the framers of the Constitution, you will see that they, many of them, including early justices, chief justices of the Supreme Court, including an astounding cast of characters from the American founding, they understood that the affirmation of the Christian biblical roots of this entire project, that that was absolutely necessary.

And thus you have Joseph Story, a very famous Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, who just over and over again said, all these affirmations we're making, they are explicitly grounded in biblical religion.

That is where they come from, and there's no affirmation of this.

At the time, that didn't appear to be, to many people, so dangerous.

And second, he has biblical revelation as well, and our nation has actually abided by that biblical revelation, and we really do think we should too.

Can I just point out too, there's a history to this in American society and in American intellectual life.

So, for instance, I mentioned Joseph Story, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court before, and there are several justices that can be put on this list.

Joseph Story filled in the back story saying this only makes sense because it is revealed in Scripture.