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]The books he published were not an incidental part of his duties at Harvard, but were envisioned at the time of his hiring. Harvard’s law school was founded in 1815 as a part-time lectureship. The university added a full-time professor three years later, whose role was encumbered by administrative, librarian, and even maintenance duties. It is said that by 1828, there was only one student enrolled in the program. This changed when Nathan Dane, an important Massachusetts attorney, proposed to fund a new professorship for the law school. In addition to having a successful legal career, Dane had served in the Continental Congress, where he had a hand in drafting the Northwest Ordinance; he served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the state’s Senate. He had also composed what was at that time the most important treatise on American law at the national level: A General Abridgement and Digest of American Law. Dane’s work was a major financial success, and it was largely from the proceeds of its sales that he was able to endow the professorship that he proposed (Powell, p. 1288-1289). Dane conditioned his donation to Harvard on the hiring of Joseph Story for the professorship. His idea, which he developed with Story and Josiah Quincy (who later became president of Harvard), was that Story should both instruct students and publish works in the spirit of his General Abridgement and Digest. The university and Story agreed to the plan. Story’s teaching duties were to be scheduled so that they would not conflict with his duties at the Court. Meantime, Story was also to compose concise commentaries on the major areas of American law (Newmyer, p. 816). The commentaries were scaled to be no larger than a couple of volumes on each topic so that practitioners could afford to acquire only those books that were relevant to their field. But they were also designed to be a collection of related works that could supply, in their aggregate, a reference set broad enough to be comprehensive.
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:
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).
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).