Robert Cooper Grier
| Robert Grier | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States | |
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In office August 4, 1846 – January 31, 1870 |
|
| Nominated by | James Polk |
| Preceded by | Henry Baldwin |
| Succeeded by | William Strong |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
March 5, 1794 Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died |
September 25, 1870 (aged 76) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Other political affiliations |
Jacksonian |
| Education | Dickinson College (BA) |
Robert Cooper Grier (March 5, 1794 – September 25, 1870), was an American jurist who served on the Supreme Court of the United States. A Jacksonian Democrat from Pennsylvania who served from 1846 to 1870, Grier weighed in on some of the most important cases of the 19th century. As a rare Northern member of the majority in the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, Grier concurred that African Americans were not—and were never meant to be—citizens of the United States and that the property rights of slaveholders were clearly protected in the Constitution. However, Grier wrote the majority opinion in the 1863 Prize Cases, upholding Abraham Lincoln’s presidential power to institute Union blockades of Confederate ports and giving the Union Army a strategic advantage in the American Civil War.
Grier was born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania to Elizabeth Cooper Grier and Isaac Grier, a Presbyterian minister and school teacher, who tutored him until he entered Dickinson College. Grier graduated from Dickinson in only one year, receiving a B.A. in 1812, and remained there as an instructor until taking a position at a school his father ran. He succeeded his father as headmaster in 1815.
While a teacher, Grier read law on his own time, and passed the bar in 1817, at which time he entered private practice in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania until 1818, and then in Danville, Pennsylvania until 1833. Grier married Isabelle Rose, the daughter of a wealthy Scottish immigrant, in 1829.
Grier was a political organizer for the Jacksonians in the Democrats. In 1833 Grier was rewarded with a patronage appointment to a judgeship on the Pennsylvania state District Court for Allegheny County, newly created for him. He served there for 13 years, developing a reputation for competence.
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