Nelson, Samuel (b. Hebron, N.Y., 10 Nov. 1792; d. Cooperstown, N.Y., 13 Dec. 1873; interred Lakewood Cemetery, Cooperstown), associate justice, 1845–1872. Nelson was raised on the farm of his immigrant Scotch‐Irish parents and educated at a common school, private academies, and Middlebury College in Vermont. After the required legal apprenticeship in upstate New York, he was admitted to the bar (1817) and developed a successful practice that emphasized litigation and real estate and commercial law. Nelson was married twice, first to Pamela Woods in 1819 and then, after Pamela's death, to Catharine Ann Russell in 1825.

He was elected the youngest delegate to the New York State Constitutional Convention (1821) and actively supported efforts to liberalize the state government, particularly by extending the franchise and restructuring the judiciary. He was appointed a New York circuit court judge in 1823, associate justice of the New York Supreme Court in 1831, and chief justice of the state supreme court in 1836. In 1845, President John Tyler, after failing several times to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, nominated Nelson, a Jacksonian Democrat, who was quickly confirmed by the Senate.

Nelson was an expert in admiralty and patent law. His significant admiralty opinions included New Jersey Steam Navigation Co. v. Merchants' Bank (1848) and Hough v. Western Transportation Co. (1866), dealing with admiralty jurisdiction of the federal courts. In patent law, his opinion in Hotchkiss v. Greenwood (1850) was a leading application of the doctrine of nonobviousness of subject matter, still one of the three conditions for patentability.

Nelson's decisions characteristically reached practical, common‐sense results while adhering to established law. In Knox County v. Aspinwall (1859) he held county bonds enforceable though issued without full compliance with statutory requirements. The decision removed a potential obstacle to public acceptance and marketability of municipal bonds.

Nelson gave deference to the legislative branch. In Pennsylvania v. Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Co. (1856), he upheld a congressional act that legalized a bridge the Court itself had declared illegal under prior law. He emphasized states' rights against delegated powers of the federal government. In Williamson v. Berry (1850), his dissent argued that state law should govern matters relating to real property, thus anticipating by many years the Court's decision in *Erie Railroad v. Tompkins (1938).

Slavery and the Civil War heightened the significance of his work. His concurring opinion in Scott v. Sandford (1857) would have affirmed the judgment of the lower court, deferring to state law on Dred Scott's citizenship and thus avoiding the inflammatory issue of the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise, which mired the Court in the slavery debate. In the Prize Cases (1863), his minority opinion contended that an armed conflict did not become a war until it was declared by the Congress, not the president. Nelson's philosophy of judicial self‐restraint also informed his opinion for the Court in Georgia v. Stanton (1868), which dismissed efforts of two Southern states to attack Reconstruction. Nelson held that the case presented a political question and hence was not justiciable.

In 1871 President Ulysses S. Grant named Nelson as one of the U.S. representatives to the Alabama Claims Commission, which satisfactorily resolved serious differences with Great Britain arising out of its actions supporting the South's prosecution of the Civil War. Thereafter, because of age and declining health, he resigned his seat on the Court.

Howard T. Sprow

NELSON, SAMUEL

Samuel Nelson served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1845 to 1872. He brought with him experience as a politician,

lawyer, and judge, which had included service as chief justice of the New York Supreme Court. His nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court by a desperate President john tyler came only after several prior nominees had declined or had been rejected by the U.S. Senate.

Nelson was born in Hebron, New York, on November 10, 1792. He entered Middlebury College, in Vermont, at the age of 15 and graduated in 1813. Nelson chose a career in law, and during his twenties he managed a successful private practice in real estate and commercial law that brought him political recognition. In 1821, he was the youngest delegate to serve in the New York state constitutional convention. His judicial career began in 1823 with his appointment as a judge to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. In 1831, he began a 14-year tenure on the New York Supreme

Court, during the last four years of which he served as its chief justice. (Since 1847, New York's highest court has been called the New York Court of Appeals.) There, Nelson developed a reputation for common sense and a belief in the limits of judicial power.

In 1845, President Tyler turned to Nelson in desperation. The president's attempts to fill a vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court had produced more than half a dozen nominees, all of whom had refused the nomination or had failed to win Senate approval. Nelson, a last-minute substitution, sailed through the nomination process.

Nelson believed that the Court should move cautiously in matters pertaining to the expressed will of Congress. He wrote the original majority opinion in the Dred Scott decision that upheld the institution of slavery (dred scott v. sandford, 60 U.S. [19 How.] 393, 15 L. Ed. 691 [1857]). Nelson's opinion sought to avoid answering the highly controversial question of slavery. But under political pressure from Southern justices on the Court, his opinion was scrapped, and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's inflammatory opinion was substituted. Taney's decision led to violent protest and deepened hostilities that ultimately led to the Civil War. Nelson died December 13, 1873.

further readings

Friedman, Leon, and Fred L. Israel, eds. 1969. The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789–1969: Their Lives and Major Opinions. New York: Chelsea House.