Today, September 18, is the birthday of Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Joseph Story, one of the most important figures in 19th-century American law. For Justice Story’s birthday, we would like to present a select list of Story’s publications in Library of Congress collections. Born in Marblehead, Massachusetts in 1779, Story read law with Samuel Sewall, who later became the chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court; he practiced law in Salem, served in the the United States House of Representatives and the Massachusetts state legislature before becoming in 1812, at the age of 32, the youngest person in the history of the nation to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court. In 1829, he became Dane Professor of Law at Harvard University’s Law School.
Story’s stature in his time depended partly on his association with the Supreme Court, and also partly on his association with Harvard University’s Law School. But it was his books - the reputation of which certainly benefited from the prestige of Story’s places of employment – that brought his vision of the law to scholars and practitioners across the nation (Newmyer, p. 822).

Joseph Story in a daguerreotype produced by Matthew Brady’s studio between 1844 and 1845 [Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division]
Story published the first of these commentaries, a work on bailments, in 1832, and he continued to publish at a rate of about one title every year or two until his death in 1845. First editions of these works – nine total – are available at the Law Library of Congress:
Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. Boston, Hilliard, Gray, and Company, 1833.
Commentaries on the law of partnership. Boston, C. C. Little & J. Brown; [etc., etc.] 1841.
Story’s Commentaries on the United States Constitution was the most widely discussed antebellum treatise on the Constitution (Powell, p. 1285). It presented a nationalist and pro-business vision of the Constitution that stood in opposition to then-influential theories of the Constitution that emphasized states’ rights and agrarian interests (Powell, p. 1287). The Library has copies of the 1833 Boston edition, the 1833 Cambridge edition, the 1833 edition printed in Philadelphia, and editions printed in 1851, 1858, 1873 and 1891, as well as several editions from the 20th century.
The Law Library has copies of three editions of the Spanish translation of Story’s Commentaries on the United States Constitution by Nicolas Antonio Calvo, 1860, 1881, 1888, the first of which is a presentation copy, signed by the author and with an inscription to the president of Argentina, Julio Argentina Roca.
The Spanish translations are based on a French translation by Paul Odent, first published in in Paris in 1843 – the Library’s copy is from the 1845 edition – to which were added notes from the writings of Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville. Joseph Story met with Tocqueville when Tocqueville came to America, and later felt that Tocqueville never acknowledged he owed Story for his contribution to the Frenchman’s understanding of the Constitution (Powell, p. 1285m n. 2).
Story also published in 1840 an accessible single volume book on the Constitution called A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States. Boston, Marsh, Capen, Lyon and Webb, 1840 which enjoyed a great deal of commercial success and was printed many times throughout the 19th century. In addition to the 1840 edition, the Law Library owns editions from 1842, 1869 and 1884.

Joseph Story’s signature appears on the upper right hand corner of the Law Library’s copy of Rede’s Strictures on the lives and characters of the most eminent lawyers of the present day: including, among other celebrated names, those of the Lord Chancellor, and the twelve judges (London, 1790). [Photo by Ellie Korres]
Story’s son, William Wetmore Story, a successful sculptor, published two volumes of his papers:
The Library of Congress Manuscript Division has a collection of Joseph Story’s correspondence.
Secondary Sources:
Newmyer, R. Kent. Harvard Law School, New England Legal Culture, and the Antebellum Origins of American Jurisprudence. The Journal of American History Vol. 74, No. 3, The Constitution and American Life: A Special Issue (Dec., 1987), pp. 814-835.
Presser, Stephen B. Resurrecting the Conservative Tradition in American Legal History. Reviews in American History Vol. 13, No. 4 (Dec., 1985), pp. 526-533. (reviewing R. Kent Newmyer, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story: Statesman of the Old Republic (1985)).
Powell, H. Jefferson. Joseph Story’s Commentaries on the Constitution: A Belated Review. The Yale Law Journal Vol. 94, No. 5 (Apr., 1985), pp. 1285-1314 (book review).