Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States
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The title page of volume I of the first edition of Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833)
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| Author | Joseph Story |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Constitutional law |
| Published | 1833 (Hilliard, Gray, and Company; Brown, Shattuck and Co.) |
| Media type | Print (hardback) (3 volumes) |
| OCLC | 3826953 |
Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States is a three-volume work written by Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Joseph Story and published in 1833. In these Commentaries, Story defends the power of the national government and economic liberty. "My object will be," Story wrote, "sufficiently attained, if I shall have succeeded in bringing before the reader the true view of its powers, maintained by its founders and friends, and confirmed and illustrated by the actual practice of the government."
Story dedicates his Commentaries to his friend and fellow Justice, Chief Justice John Marshall:
When, indeed, I look back upon your judicial labors during a period of thirty-two years, it is difficult to suppress astonishment at their extent and variety, and at the exact learning, the profound reasoning, and the solid principles which they everywhere display. Other judges have attained an elevated reputation by similar labors, in a single department of jurisprudence. But in one department, (it need scarcely be said that I allude to that of constitutional law,) the common consent of your countrymen has admitted you to stand without a rival.
In his preface Story writes:
From two great sources, however, I have drawn by far the greatest part of my most valuable materials. These are, The Federalist, an incomparable commentary of three of the greatest statesmen of their age, and the extraordinary Judgments of Mr. Chief Justice Marshall upon constitutional law. The former have discussed the structure and organization of the national government, in all its departments, with admirable fulness and force. The latter has expounded the application and limits of its powers and functions with unrivalled profoundness and felicity. The Federalist could do little more than state the objects and general bearing of these powers and functions. The masterly reasoning of the Chief Justice has followed them out to their ultimate results and boundaries with a precision and clearness approaching, as near as may be, to mathematical demonstration.
Story contrasts these commentaries to the writings of other commentators of the Constitution: "The reader must not expect to find in these pages any novel views and novel constructions of the Constitution. I have not the ambition to be the author of any new plan of interpreting the theory of the Constitution, or of enlarging or narrowing its powers by ingenious subtitlies and learned doubts."
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