Bushrod Washington was George Washington's nephew and chosen heir — a young dragoon in the Revolution's last Virginia campaigns, then a law student under James Wilson (§10) in Philadelphia, with his uncle paying the fees. John Adams put the diligent Virginia lawyer on the Court in 1798, at thirty-six. When Martha Washington died in 1802 he inherited Mount Vernon and the general's papers, which he turned over to John Marshall (§13) for the great Life of Washington.
Thirty-one years beside Marshall made the two men, as William Johnson (§14) grumbled, 'commonly estimated as one judge.' Washington's independent monuments are few but weighty: Corfield v. Coryell, the 1823 circuit opinion whose catalogue of the 'privileges and immunities' of citizenship became the canonical gloss on the clause and echoed through the Fourteenth Amendment debates; Green v. Biddle, extending the Contract Clause to the Virginia–Kentucky Compact; and Ogden v. Saunders, where his lead opinion upholding prospective insolvency laws dealt Marshall his only constitutional dissent. The moral ledger is darker: first president of the American Colonization Society, he sold fifty-four of Mount Vernon's enslaved people south in 1821 rather than free them. He died on circuit duty in Philadelphia in 1829.
Corfield v. Coryell (on circuit)
1823Holding · Article IV's Privileges and Immunities Clause protects a core of fundamental rights of citizenship — though New Jersey could still reserve its oyster fisheries to its own citizens.
Role · Washington wrote the opinion for the circuit court in Pennsylvania.
His enumeration of 'fundamental' privileges became the most-quoted gloss on the clause, central to the framing debates of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Green v. Biddle
1823Holding · Kentucky's occupying-claimant laws violated the Virginia–Kentucky Compact of 1789, which the Contract Clause protects.
Role · Washington wrote for the Court on rehearing.
Extended the Contract Clause to interstate compacts — and set off years of Kentucky fury at the Court that shadowed Todd (§16) and Trimble (§20) at home.
Read the opinion →Ogden v. Saunders
1827Holding · A state insolvency law that applies only to contracts made after its enactment does not impair the obligation of contracts.
Role · Washington wrote the lead opinion of the four-justice seriatim majority.
The only constitutional case John Marshall (§13) ever lost on his own Court — and Washington's one great step out of his chief's shadow.
Read the opinion →Washington's Heir: The Life of Justice Bushrod Washington (2022) by Gerard N. Magliocca (Oxford University Press) — the first full biography of Bushrod Washington ever published, 193 years after his death, and now the indispensable starting point. Clear-eyed on both the jurist and the slaveholder, it single-handedly rescued its subject from the footnotes.
The Bookshelf
From William & Mary and the apprenticeship under Justice James Wilson (whose seat he would eventually fill) through thirty-one years on the Court, the inheritance of Mount Vernon and George Washington's papers, the founding presidency of the American Colonization Society, and the 1821 sale of enslaved people from Mount Vernon that scandalized even his contemporaries.
The essential study of Bushrod's most influential act — the 1823 circuit opinion whose privileges-and-immunities catalog the Reconstruction framers quoted into the Fourteenth Amendment's history. Magliocca reconstructs the case, the opinion's drafting, and its strange afterlife, correcting a long tradition of loose citation. Freely available.
The classic examination of the Court's closest working partnership — whether Bushrod was Marshall's shadow or an independent mind who happened to agree. The starting point for the question that still defines his judicial reputation.
Two law-review assessments of Bushrod as a working judge — Johnson's in the same 2009 Vanderbilt symposium that reassessed Samuel Chase, Faber's on his role in early American legal development. Both cited in the Federal Judicial Center's bibliography; both predate Magliocca and read best alongside him.
The definitive institutional history of the Court on which Bushrod spent his last fifteen years — boardinghouse deliberation, circuit practice, and the internal dynamics that made the Marshall Court speak with one voice. The essential frame for judging any individual member of it. Oxford University Press.
Covers Bushrod's recess appointment, confirmation, and first two years on the bench. The series ends in 1800 — the bulk of his thirty-one-year tenure lies beyond it; for the later years, White and Magliocca are the guides.
The first dedicated treatment of the ugliest fact of Washington's life — his sale of fifty-four enslaved people from Mount Vernon in 1821, while serving as president of the American Colonization Society. The short precursor to the reckoning Magliocca's biography delivers at length.
The Reading Path
A researched route through the literature — in order.
- 1.Magliocca — for the first and only full biography — jurist, heir, and slaveholder in one frame
- 2.Magliocca, "Rediscovering Corfield" — for the landmark opinion and its constitutional afterlife
- 3.Custer — for the Marshall partnership and the "single judge" question
- 4.White — for the Marshall Court world that Bushrod helped hold together
- 5.Johnson and Faber — for modern judicial assessments preceding the biography
- 6.The Documentary History — for the appointment and the earliest years on the bench
- 7.Annis and Binney — for the older tradition — the dissertation and the memorial — read critically
Where the Papers Are Kept
Bushrod's own papers are scattered and thin — part of why his biography took two centuries. The Washington Library at Mount Vernon holds significant material (he lived at, and ran, Mount Vernon for three decades), and its Digital Encyclopedia entry is the best free online overview. Visit →
Online Resources
- Federal Judicial Center — Bushrod Washington — Authoritative dates and a working bibliography
Ideas for Further Research
- Bushrod is the strongest recent proof of this site's thesis: a consequential justice can wait 193 years for a biographer. Magliocca closed the gap in 2022 — Corfield v. Coryell alone justified the wait.