 Gabriel Duvall was born on December 6,
1752 in Maryland. Duvall was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1778. In 1787,
Duvall married Mary Bryce, who died after giving birth to their son. Duvall
later married Jane Gibbon. Duvall supported independence from England. He
was chosen to serve Maryland at the Constitutional Convention, but declined.
In the 1790s, Duvall became a supporter of Jefferson, and organized the
Jeffersonian Republicans in Maryland for the presidential election of 1800.
Duvall was
appointed Comptroller of the Treasury by Jefferson in 1802, where he
remained until he was appointed to the Court nine years later. Duvall was nominated
to the Court by President James Madison to replace
Samuel
Chase. This would be the last appointment to the
Supreme Court for over 11 years, the longest such period in American history
(and over twice as long as the next longest period). Although Duvall was a Jeffersonian, he
staunchly supported the constitutional jurisprudence of
John
Marshall. He even followed Marshall in the only constitutional
case in which Marshall explicitly dissented,
Ogden v.
Saunders (1827). Duvall explicitly disagreed with Marshall only in
Dartmouth
College v. Woodward (1819). |
