Curtis, Benjamin R.

Curtis, Benjamin R. (Robbins)

(1809–74) lawyer, U.S. Supreme Court justice; born in Watertown, Mass. From an old Massachusetts family, he was left fatherless as a youth and his mother had to help put him through Harvard College and Law School by running a students' boarding house. He entered a Boston relative's law firm and specialized in commercial law (1834–51). He was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1851 and although he opposed the Free Soil Party and had once argued that a slave-owner should be able to restrain his slave when temporarily in a free state, he gained his place in American legal history by being one of the two justices who dissented in Scott v. Sandford (1857). Opposing Chief Justice Taney, Curtis argued that Dred Scott had acquired freedom by residing in free territory. When Curtis published his opinion prematurely, Taney revised his own to counter its arguments; the ensuing correspondence led Curtis to resign from the Supreme Court (1857). (What is usually overlooked in this, however, is that Curtis's brother, George Curtis, had defended Dred Scott.) He took up his lucrative private practice and continued to argue many cases before the Supreme Court. On the approach of the Civil War he reversed himself again, asking Massachusetts to repeal its law against the return of fugitive slaves, evidently in order to placate Southern states. During the war he attacked President Lincoln for suspending the writ of habeas corpus and for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. His last moment on the public stage was as chief counsel of President Andrew Johnson in his impeachment trial.

单词	curtis, benjamin r.
释义	Curtis, Benjamin R. Curtis, Benjamin R. (Robbins) (1809–74) lawyer, U.S. Supreme Court justice; born in Watertown, Mass. From an old Massachusetts family, he was left fatherless as a youth and his mother had to help put him through Harvard College and Law School by running a students' boarding house. He entered a Boston relative's law firm and specialized in commercial law (1834–51). He was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1851 and although he opposed the Free Soil Party and had once argued that a slave-owner should be able to restrain his slave when temporarily in a free state, he gained his place in American legal history by being one of the two justices who dissented in Scott v. Sandford (1857). Opposing Chief Justice Taney, Curtis argued that Dred Scott had acquired freedom by residing in free territory. When Curtis published his opinion prematurely, Taney revised his own to counter its arguments; the ensuing correspondence led Curtis to resign from the Supreme Court (1857). (What is usually overlooked in this, however, is that Curtis's brother, George Curtis, had defended Dred Scott.) He took up his lucrative private practice and continued to argue many cases before the Supreme Court. On the approach of the Civil War he reversed himself again, asking Massachusetts to repeal its law against the return of fugitive slaves, evidently in order to placate Southern states. During the war he attacked President Lincoln for suspending the writ of habeas corpus and for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. His last moment on the public stage was as chief counsel of President Andrew Johnson in his impeachment trial.
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