John Blair
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John Blair
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| In office February 2, 1790 – October 25, 1795 |
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| Nominated by | George Washington |
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| Preceded by | (none) |
| Succeeded by | Samuel Chase |
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| Born | Oct 1731 Williamsburg, Virginia |
| Died | August 31, 1800 Williamsburg, Virginia |
John Blair, Jr. (October 1731–August 31, 1800) was an American politician, Founding Father, and Patriot.
John Blair was one of the best-trained jurists of his day. A famous legal scholar, he avoided the tumult of state politics, preferring to work behind the scenes. But he was devoted to the idea of a permanent union of the newly independent states and loyally supported fellow Virginians James Madison and George Washington at the Constitutional Convention. His greatest contribution as a Founding Father came not in Philadelphia, but later as a judge on the Virginia court of appeals and on the U.S. Supreme Court, where he influenced the interpretation of the Constitution in a number of important decisions. Contemporaries praised Blair for such personal strengths as gentleness and benevolence, and for his ability to penetrate immediately to the heart of a legal question.
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[edit] Career before the Constitutional Convention
Blair was a member of a prominent Virginia family, served as mayor of Williamsburg, Virginia from 1751 to 1752. His father served on the Virginia Council and was for a time acting Royal governor. His granduncle, James Blair, was founder and first president of the College of William and Mary. Blair attended William and Mary and in 1775 went to London to study law at the Middle Temple. Returning home to practice law, he was quickly thrust into public life, beginning his public career shortly after the close of the French and Indian War with his election to the seat reserved for the College of William and Mary in the House of Burgesses (1766-70). He went on to become clerk of the Royal Governor's Council, the upper house of the colonial legislature (1770-75).
Blair originally joined the moderate wing of the Patriot cause. He opposed Patrick Henry's extremist resolutions in protest of the Stamp Act, but the dissolution of the House of Burgesses by Parliament profoundly altered his views. In response to a series of Parliamentary taxes on the colonies, Blair joined George Washington and others in 1770 and again in 1774 to draft nonimportation agreements which pledged their supporters to cease importing British goods until the taxes were repealed. In the latter year he reacted to Parliament's passage of the Intolerable Acts by joining those calling for a Continental Congress and pledging support for the people of Boston who were suffering economic hardship because of Parliament's actions.
When the Revolution began, Blair became deeply involved in the government of his state. He served as a member of the convention that drew up Virginia's constitution (1776) and held a number of important committee positions, including a seat on the Committee of 28 that framed Virginia's Declaration of Rights and plan of government. He served on the Privy Council, Governor Patrick Henry's major advisory group (1776-78). The legislature elected him to a judgeship in the general court in 1778 and soon thereafter to the post of chief justice. He was named Grand Master of Freemasons in Virginia under the newly organized Grand Lodge of Virginia in 1778. He was also elected to Virginia's high court of chancery (1780), where his colleague was George Wythe, later a fellow delegate to the Constitutional Convention. These judicial appointments automatically made Blair a member of Virginia's first court of appeals. In 1786, the legislature, recognizing Blair's prestige as a jurist, appointed him Thomas Jefferson's successor on a committee revising the laws of Virginia.
[edit] Contributions to the constitutional convention
Although a faithful attendee, Blair never addressed the Convention nor sat on any of its committees. When the question of how the President should be elected arose, he joined George Mason and Edmund Randolph in advocating election by the Congress, thus splitting the Virginia delegation. Coming to realize that his stand was weakening his delegation in the voting process and impeding the progress of the Convention, he abandoned his position and voted with Washington and Madison, who, as a stalwart nationalist, he supported for the remainder of the Convention.
[edit] Career after the constitutional convention
Blair returned to Williamsburg, Virginia, where he supported the new Constitution in a heated ratification struggle that pitted him and his colleagues against opponents who included some of the greatest orators of the day.
He continued to sit on the Virginia court of appeals, where he made a number of decisions important in the formation of Virginia jurisprudence. In Commonwealth vs. Posey, he based his decision on a 200-year-old precedent in English Common Law, thus establishing as a principle in American law that the accepted judicial understanding of a statute forms a part of the law itself and must be adhered to. More importantly, he and his colleagues on the court drafted a Remonstrance of the Judges that was successful in defending judges from the jurisdiction of the state legislature, thus preserving the principle of separation of powers in the state
[edit] Supreme Court Service
President George Washington, Blair's longtime friend, chose him to be an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Blair served as a Justice from 1789 to 1796. He participated in several important constitutional cases. Well known as a strict constructionist, Blair could find no solution in the clauses of the Constitution to the question posed by Chisholm v. Georgia, in which the Court upheld the right of an individual to sue a state in federal court without the state's consent. That decision led directly to the passage of the Eleventh Amendment, which declared that the federal judicial power does not extend to law suits against states by citizens of different states or foreign nationals.
Blair considered the separation of powers the basis of political liberty. When Congress passed an act in 1792 that subjected certain judicial decisions to legislative review, Blair was among the justices who, using arguments from the Remonstrance, attacked the act as an infringement upon the independence of the courts. From the bench he also pressed his view that the central government had precedence over the governments of the states. In Penhallow v. Doane's Administrators, Blair asserted this primacy by defending the power of the federal circuit courts to overturn the decisions of the state maritime courts.
Blair resigned from the Court due to ill health in 1796. He died in 1800.
| Preceded by John Amson |
Mayor of Williamsburg, Virginia 1751-1752 |
Succeeded by John Holt |
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| New seat Created by the Judiciary Act of 1789
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Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 1790-1795 |
Succeeded by Samuel Chase |
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The Virginia colleague of Madison in signing the federal constitution was John Blair. This distinguished man was born in that State about the year 1731. On receiving a collegiate education, he entered upon the study of the law, and in a very few years rose to the head of his profession. From eminence at the bar, his course to political distinction was rapid and successful. He was called by the voice of his fellow-citizens to some of the highest and most important trusts, which he faithfully discharged, at a time when the state of the country wore the most gloomy aspect, and by his exertions contributed essentially to its liberty and independence.
In 1787, at which time Mr. Blair was judge of the court of appeals, the legislature of Virginia, finding the judiciary system inconvenient, established circuit courts, the duties of which they directed the judges of the courts of appeals to perform. These judges, among whose names are those of Blair, Pendleton, and Wythe, remonstrated, and declared the act unconstitutional. In the same year he took his seat in the convention which met at Philadelphia to frame the federal constitution, and was one of its most active members. To that instrument the names of Blair and Madison are affixed as the deputies from Virginia. In September, 1789, when the government which he had assisted in establishing had commenced its operations, he was appointed by President Washington an associate judge of the supreme court of the United States. He died September 12, 1800, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. Judge Blair was an amiable, accomplished, and truly virtuous man.
Source: Marshall, James V.. The United States Manual of Biography and History. Philadelphia: James B. Smith & Co., 1856. Page 180. (Some minor spelling changes may have been made.)
[edit] References
- Initial article adapted from public domain U.S. military text. [1]
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