(September 18, 1779–September 10, 1845), was a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, appointed in 1811 by President James Madison (“The Chief Architect of the Constitution”). He was the youngest person ever to serve in that position and continued on the bench for 34 years, until his death. He had been a U.S. Representative, 1808–09, and son of one of the Boston Tea Party “Indians.” He was instrumental in establishing federal supremacy in Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 1816; and in establishing the illegality of the slave trade in the Amistad case.
The founder of Harvard Law School, 1821–45, Joseph Story wrote tremendously influential works, including: Bailments, 1832; Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 1833; Equity Jurisprudence, 1836; and A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States, 1840.
In 1829, Justice Joseph Story explained in a speech at Harvard:
There never has been a period of history, in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundation.1773
In his work, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States, 1840, Justice Joseph Story, stated:
We are not to attribute this prohibition of a national religious establishment [First Amendment] to an indifference to religion in general, and especially to Christianity (which none could hold in more reverence than the framers of the Constitution). …
Probably, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and of the Amendment to it now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the State so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship.
An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.
But the duty of supporting religion, and especially the Christian religion, is very different from the right to force the consciences of other men or to punish them for worshipping God in the manner which they believe their accountability to Him requires. … The rights of conscience are, indeed, beyond the just reach of any human power. They are given by God, and cannot be encroached upon by human authority without a criminal disobedience of the precepts of natural as well as of revealed religion.
The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.1774
In 1833, in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, Justice Joseph Story stated:
It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape.1775
The first and fundamental rule in the interpretation of all instruments is to construe them according to the sense of the terms and the intentions of the parties.1776
The whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the State governments, to be acted upon according to their justice and the State Constitutions.1777
In the 1844 case of Vidal v. Girard’s Executors, Justice Joseph Story delivered the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion:
Christianity … is not to be maliciously and openly reviled and blasphemed against, to the annoyance of believers or the injury of the public. …
It is unnecessary for us, however, to consider the establishment of a school or college, for the propagation of … Deism, or any other form of infidelity. Such a case is not to be presumed to exist in a Christian country. …
Why may not laymen instruct in the general principles of Christianity as well as ecclesiastics. … And we cannot overlook the blessings, which such [lay]men by their conduct, as well as their instructions, may, nay must, impart to their youthful pupils.
Why may not the Bible, and especially the New Testament, without note or comment, be read and taught as a Divine Revelation in the [school]—its general precepts expounded, its evidences explained and its glorious principles of morality inculcated?
What is there to prevent a work, not sectarian, upon the general evidences of Christianity, from being read and taught in the college by lay teachers? It may well be asked, what is there in all this, which is positively enjoined, inconsistent with the spirit or truths of the religion of Christ? Are not these truths all taught by Christianity, although it teaches much more?
Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?1778
Justice Joseph Story insured:
There is not a truth to be gathered from history more certain, or more momentous, than this: that civil liberty cannot long be separated from religious liberty without danger, and ultimately without destruction to both.
Wherever religious liberty exists, it will, first or last, bring in and establish political liberty.1779