Levi Woodbury had held nearly every job American government offers before he reached the Court: New Hampshire judge at twenty-seven, governor at thirty-three, U.S. senator twice, Jackson's Secretary of the Navy and then of the Treasury — where he administered the post-Bank deposit system and issued the hard-money Specie Circular. By way of a stint at Tapping Reeve's Litchfield academy, he is counted the first justice to have attended a law school. Polk gave Story's (§18) seat to this most credentialed of Democrats in 1845, and nobody believed he had stopped wanting the presidency.
Woodbury judged like the cautious national Democrat he was. His most consequential opinion, Jones v. Van Zandt, rejected Salmon P. Chase's (§39) defense of an Ohio abolitionist sued for aiding fugitives: the fugitive-slave guarantee stood among the Constitution's 'sacred compromises,' a political settlement no court could unsettle. In Luther v. Borden he accepted Taney's (§24) political-question frame for Rhode Island's rival governments but dissented on martial law, refusing to let an emergency suspend individual protections. He was a serious contender for the 1848 Democratic nomination and a likelier one for 1852 — a path that ended when he died in September 1851. Fillmore filled the seat with Curtis (§32).
Jones v. Van Zandt
1847Holding · The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was constitutional; an Ohio abolitionist was liable for harboring fugitives.
Role · Woodbury wrote for a unanimous Court, rejecting Salmon P. Chase's (§39) antislavery argument.
Slavery as one of the Constitution's 'sacred compromises' — the judicial settlement Uncle Tom's Cabin answered; Van Zandt became Stowe's Van Trompe.
Read the opinion →Luther v. Borden
1849Holding · Which of Rhode Island's rival governments was legitimate is a political question for Congress, not the courts.
Role · Woodbury agreed on the political question but dissented on martial law's reach.
His partial dissent drew an early line against emergency power over individual rights.
Read the opinion →No published biography of Levi Woodbury exists despite a seventeen-thousand-item archive at the Library of Congress — one of the standing puzzles of the field. Until someone solves it, the anchor is "The Jurisprudence of Levi Woodbury" by Bader, Abraham & Staab (Vermont Law Review, 1994): fifty pages taking Woodbury seriously as the Court's model positivist — a judge of real ability who separated law from morals with a rigor that made him, in the era's hardest cases, an instrument of the era's worst compromises.
The Bookshelf
The fullest modern assessment, from a team including Henry Abraham, the dean of judicial-appointments scholarship. Also the place to absorb the astonishing résumé: before Salmon Chase, the only man to be a governor, a United States senator, a cabinet secretary (twice over), and a Supreme Court justice.
One of the most influential books ever written about American judging, and Woodbury is among its exhibits: the study of antebellum judges who applied proslavery law while professing personal opposition — the 'moral-formal dilemma' in its sharpest form. Cover's reading of Van Zandt gives this shelf its intellectual spine: the question is not whether Woodbury was able (he was) but what ability in service of settlement was worth. Yale University Press.
The defining opinion: an Ohio farmer sued for harboring fugitives, defended by Salmon Chase and William Seward on higher-law grounds, answered with the era's plainest judicial refusal — slavery is "a political question, settled by each state for itself," and a judge's oath runs to the law as it is. Harriet Beecher Stowe reportedly drew on Van Zandt for Uncle Tom's Cabin. The antithesis, on the same docket, of Duvall's one-paragraph dissent a generation earlier. Free online.
Woodbury kept private notes inside Jackson's cabinet, and this edition is the shelf's best window on the political operator behind the judicial mask — the Bank war from the inside, colleagues appraised with a courtier's eye. A reminder that the Library of Congress archive is full of material like this, waiting for the biographer who never comes.
The son's memorial, four decades on — the Victorian genre this site knows well (compare Tyler's Taney and the Story Life and Letters). Filial and selective, but the fullest connected narrative of the life in print. His writings were also collected in three volumes shortly after his death. Public domain.
The home-state genre with a twist: New Hampshire's five justices surveyed together, from Woodbury to the newly seated David Souter. A companion to the site's other state surveys (O'Connor on Georgia, Powell on Virginia) — and a preview of three future pages: Clifford, Chase, and Stone.
Two doctoral dissertations — the rise to 1831, and the Treasury years — that between them contain most of a biography that was never written. As with Annis's Bushrod Washington dissertation, they mark the spot where scholarship stopped short of a book; the Woodbury life remains, with Nelson's, among the most conspicuous vacancies on the entire shelf.
The frame for the six-year tenure: the License and Passenger Cases, the fugitive-slave docket, and the Court's uneasy 1840s equilibrium. Swisher also captures what the death cost: Woodbury was the Democracy's likeliest 1852 nominee — until September 1851 rerouted that history through Franklin Pierce. Macmillan.
The only published edition of Woodbury's writings — three volumes gathered the year after his death, spanning the political, judicial, and literary careers. His archival papers at the Library of Congress remain unpublished, so this remains the printed record. Little, Brown.
The standard monograph on the political machine Woodbury rode from Concord to the cabinet to the Court — with Woodbury himself as its central figure. Given that no biography of him exists, this is the closest thing to a book-length life. Harvard University Press.
The companion piece to the Vermont Law Review study on this shelf — a systematic assessment of where Woodbury stands in the scholarly rankings and why the first justice with a law-school education left so faint a mark.
The Reading Path
A researched route through the literature — in order.
- 1.Bader, Abraham & Staab — for the modern assessment of the model positivist
- 2.Cover, then Van Zandt itself — for the moral test and the opinion that failed it — or passed it, depending on your jurisprudence
- 3.The Intimate Memoranda — for the operator inside Jackson's cabinet
- 4.The 1894 Memoir — for the fullest connected life in print, read as the son's monument
- 5.Jones — for the Granite State five, three of them still ahead on this site
- 6.Swisher — for the Court of the 1840s and the presidency that death rerouted
Where the Papers Are Kept
Papers of the Levi Woodbury family, 1638–1914 — 16 linear feet, some 17,000 items of correspondence, diaries, and financial and legal papers. After four straight archival voids on this site, the opposite problem: the materials for a major biography exist in one building. Smaller collections at Dartmouth, the New Hampshire Historical Society, and Duke, as the FJC lists them. Visit →
Online Resources
Ideas for Further Research
- The résumé and the seat: Story's chair passed to the only man before Salmon Chase to hold all four stations — governor, senator, cabinet secretary, justice — and then to Curtis, the first justice with a law degree. Woodbury himself was the first future justice to attend any law school (Litchfield), the milestone the law-schools list records.
- The sliding door of September 1851: Woodbury was the Democracy's leading 1852 contender when he died at Portsmouth; the nomination — and the presidency — went to his fellow New Hampshireman Franklin Pierce. A plausible President Woodbury is one of the era's great counterfactuals.
- Van Zandt as the site's deliberate antithesis to Queen v. Hepburn: Duvall dissented alone for freedom against the evidence rules; Woodbury, for a unanimous Court, called slavery a political question and enforced the compromise. Cover's Justice Accused hangs the whole moral-formal dilemma on judges like him.