Justice Robert Trimble
Today’s Justice of the Day is: ROBERT TRIMBLE. Justice Trimble was born on this day, November 17, in 1776.
Justice Trimble was born in what was then Augusta County, Virginia (the place of his birth has since become part of West Virginia), but was raised in Kentucky, the state in which he would spend nearly his entire professional life and from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He attended what is today Transylvania University, in Lexington, Kentucky, but did not earn a degree from that school.
Justice Trimble entered private practice in Paris, Kentucky in 1803, the same year in which he served in the Kentucky House of Representatives. His first stint as a private attorney lasted until 1808, during which time he also became a Second Judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, serving from 1807 to 1808. The following year, Justice Trimble returned to private practice, and would continue working as such until President James Madison appointed him to be a Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Kentucky in 1817. Concurrent with his post-1809 private legal career, he briefly returned to the Kentucky Court of Appeals to once again be a Second Judge, in 1810, was Chief Justice of that court, also in 1810, and was District Attorney of the State of Kentucky, from 1813 to 1817. Justice Trimble ultimately stayed on as a United States District Judge until his elevation to the SCUS.
Justice Trimble was nominated by President John Quincy Adams on April 11, 1826, to a seat vacated by Justice Thomas Todd. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 9, 1826, and received his commission that day. Justice Trimble took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on or around June 16, and served out his (very brief) tenure on the Marshall Court. His service was terminated just two years later, on August 25, 1828, due to his death.
Justice Trimble is not particularly well remembered today, perhaps due to the brevity of his term on the SCUS (his was the 4th shortest tenure of any Justice in Supreme Court history). He also did not have the opportunity to take part in just about any of the most well-known cases in that era, which may help further explain the relatively small impact he had on the SCUS.