Grey calf binding with gilt banding, decoration and title on the spine. Gilt emblem on the front board. All edges gilt.

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Full grey leather bound with 3 raised spine bands and gilt lettering with gilt accent cover, gilt edges and marbled endpapers, 372 pages. The Library of American Freedoms Series was sponsored by The National Rifle Association and includes an Introduction by the NRA’s Chief Executive Officer, Wayne La Pierre whose gilt signature is on the cover.

Joseph Story (September 18, 1779 – September 10, 1845) was an American lawyer, jurist, and politician who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1812 to 1845. He is most remembered for his opinions in Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee and United States v. The Amistad, and especially for his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, first published in 1833. Dominating the field in the 19th century, this work is a cornerstone of early American jurisprudence. It is the second comprehensive treatise on the provisions of the U.S. Constitution and remains a critical source of historical information about the forming of the American republic and the early struggles to define its law.

Story opposed Jacksonian democracy, saying it was “oppression” of property rights by republican governments when popular majorities began in the 1830s to restrict and erode the property rights of the minority of rich men. R. Kent Newmyer presents Story as a “Statesman of the Old Republic” who tried to be above democratic politics and to shape the law in accordance with the republicanism of Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall, and the New England Whigs of the 1820s and 1830s, including Daniel Webster. Historians generally agree that Story reshaped American law—as much or more than Marshall or anyone else—in a conservative direction that protected property rights.

He was uniquely honored in the historical Steven Spielberg film Amistad when he was portrayed by retired justice Harry Blackmun. Blackmun portrays Story reading the Supreme Court’s decision in the case on which the film was based: United States v. The Amistad. This is the only time in known film history that one Supreme Court justice has portrayed another.