Justice William Cushing
Today’s Justice of the Day is: WILLIAM CUSHING. Justice Cushing was born on this day, March 1, in 1732.
Justice Cushing was born in Scituate, Province of Massachusetts, which would become the state from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. in 1751.
Immediately after graduation, Justice Cushing briefly worked in private practice in his home town of Scituate (from 1755 to 1760), before serving as Justice of the Peace, Register of Deeds, and a probate court judge in Lincoln County, Maine (from 1760 to 1772). He was appointed to the seat on the Superior Court of Massachusetts that had just been vacated by his father the year he left Maine. Justice Cushing was promoted to be that court’s Chief Justice in 1777, and was the only jurist to stay on the bench after it was reorganized into the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in 1780 (following the end of the American Revolutionary War), before going on to hold that office until his appointment to the SCUS. His time on the Massachusetts high court was arguably more consequential than his later service at the SCUS, as he notably took part in deciding a case where the court held that slavery was irreconcilable with Massachusetts’ new state constitution.
Justice Cushing was nominated President George Washington on September 24, 1789, to a seat newly authorized by Congress. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 26, and received his commission the following day. Justice Cushing took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on or around February 2, 1790, and served on the Jay, Rutledge, Ellsworth, and Marshall Courts. His service was terminated on September 13, 1810, due to his death.
Justice Cushing is not especially well-remembered today, which can be largely attributed to the fact that most of his tenure occurred during the SCUS’s relatively inconsequential pre-Chief Justice John Marshall period. He did not even take part in what might have been the most important case to be considered while he was on the bench, Marbury v. Madison (1803), which played an enormous role in cementing the supremacy of the Constitution in American law. Justice Cushing was actually nominated and confirmed to be Chief Justice of the United States in 1796, but declined to accept the appointment.