Grier, Robert Cooper

Grier, Robert Cooper (b. Cumberland County, Pa., 5 Mar. 1794; d. Philadelphia, Pa., 25 Sep. 1870; interred West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Bala‐Cynwyd, Pa.), associate justice, 1846–1870. The eldest of the eleven children of the Rev. Isaac Grier and Elizabeth Cooper, Grier grew up in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, and then Northumberland, where his father farmed, preached, and taught school. Educated in his boyhood by his Presbyterian father, Grier enrolled as a junior at Dickinson College and graduated in 1812. After his father's death in 1815, Grier, at age twenty‐one, assumed control of his father's academy and began studying law. Admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1817, he practiced in Bloomsburg and Danville, supported his mother, and provided for the education of his ten brothers and sisters. In 1829 he married the wealthy Isabella Rose.

In 1833 Grier was appointed judge of the Allegheny County District Court. The appointment was something of a political accident, and his elevation to the supreme bench was equally accidental. Henry Baldwin, the “Pennsylvania Justice,” had died in 1844, and Presidents John Tyler and James K. Polk had been unable to find a successor until Polk nominated the noncontroversial (and almost unknown) Grier.

During his twenty‐three years on the Court, Grier occupied a middle ground. In the License Cases (1847), he upheld the states' police power even when it interfered with interstate commerce, but he drew the line in the Passenger Cases (1849), which involved two states levying taxes on ship masters. The eventual solution, found in the decision in Cooley v. Board of Wardens of the Port of the Philadelphia (1852) and known as *“selective exclusiveness,” met with Grier's approbation (see Commerce Power).

In Marshall v. Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Co. (1853), Grier upheld the Court's jurisdiction in a diversity of citizenship case involving corporations, but found the contract contrary to the public interest: lobbyists were “a compact corps of venal solicitors” (p. 335). Usually he supported states' rights, notably in Woodruff v. Trapnall (1850) and Waring v. Clarke (1847).

Grier identified with the southern wing of the Court in slavery cases. In 1847 he irritated Pittsburgh abolitionists in his charge to the jury in a fugitive slave case. In Moore v. Illinois (1852), he found constitutional sanction for double jeopardy for those who aided runaways. But he refused to consider armed opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act as treason since it did not amount to levying war.

In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) Grier played a minor role. Initially Grier wished to avoid the question of citizenship for blacks, but the consensus broke down. Determined that the Court's vote not be strictly sectional, Justice John Catron enlisted President James Buchanan to lobby Grier, who willingly promised his full support for Chief Justice Roger Taney's opinion and indicated the direction the opinion would take. In his inaugural address of 4 March 1857, Buchanan disingenuously mentioned the case. When the decision was announced two days later, northern critics furiously charged Taney with tipping off the president, although Grier was the real culprit.

Although known as a “doughface,” a northern man with southern principles, Grier remained a committed Unionist. On the circuit in United States v. William Smith (1861), he instructed the jury that the Confederate government had no recognized legal existence, a view repeated that in the Prize Cases (1863), which sustained President Abraham Lincoln's blockade and war policy. Grier was less supportive in other areas. He questioned the validity of the income tax; opposed on circuit the confiscation of a newspaper; and interpreted narrowly the uses of paper money.

Grier opposed Radical Reconstruction. In Ex parte Milligan (1866), Grier sided with Justice David Davis's extreme opinion and leaked the vote to Attorney General Orville Browning. He voted against test oaths in Cummings v. Missouri (1867) and Ex parte Garland (1867) and opposed the delay in deciding Ex parte McCardle (1869), which allowed time for Congress to remove the court's jurisdiction (see Judicial Power and Jurisdiction). In Texas v. White (1869), he argued eloquently that the conquered Republic of Texas was politically not a state.

Grier's health declined seriously after 1867. In conference on the Legal Tender Cases (1870–1871), his mind and votes wandered. Justice Stephen Johnson Field led a delegation urging his retirement, and Grier complied.

Grier was a large, ruddy man given to trout fishing. He was at once a natural‐born vulgarian—coarse and harsh—and an above‐average writer with interests in Greek and Latin.

Bibliography

Don E. Fehrenbacher , The Dred Scott Case; Its Significance in American Law and Politics (1978).
David M. Silver , Lincoln's Supreme Court (1957).

Michael B. Dougan