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Supreme
Court Justices
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Samuel Nelson (1792-1873) |
 Samuel
Nelson was born on November 10, 1792 in New York. He attended Middlebury
College in Vermont, and then read law. He was admitted to practice law
in New York in 1817. Nelson was appointed a judge in 1823, two years
after New York reformed its judiciary by its 1821 Convention. Nelson was
appointed to the trial court (New York Supreme Court) in 1831. In 1845,
after the Senate had thwarted other nominations by President Van Buren,
Nelson was nominated and confirmed.
Nelson's constitutional law opinions are not numerous. He concurred with the majority in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), but he wrote that the decision should be based on acceptance of the Missouri Supreme Court's decision to reject its "once free, always free" (that is, once a slave was taken voluntarily by the master to a state or territory where slavery was prohibited, the slave was a freedman, and could not be returned to a state of slavery). This would have avoided the conclusion of Chief Justice Taney that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional. In 1872, Nelson resigned from the Court. In 1819, Nelson married Pamela Woods. In 1825, after Pamela's death, Nelson married Catharine Russell. He died on December 13, 1873. |
