From Legal Commentaries to Common Instruction: Joseph Story’s Abridgments to His Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States

Justice Joseph Story’s Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833) have long been regarded as the scholarly source for a nationalist account of the U.S. Constitution in Antebellum America. Yet recent scholarship has questioned whether the Commentaries should be viewed exclusively as a work of legal scholarship. This article reinterprets Justice Story’s three-volume work as a project of civic education during a period of political and constitutional uncertainty. Written during the Nullification Crisis and in the wake of codification efforts, Justice Story presents his Commentaries for the use of the American public, providing them, and not exclusively lawyers and judges, with a source to support a popular conception of American constitutionalism. Story’s project of civic education is clearly shown by his personal efforts to abridge his Commentaries on three separate occasions to ensure the wide distribution of the work to Americans of different ages, groups, localities, and levels of education. As such, this article offers Justice Story as a guide to contemporary judges who seek to engage in civic education projects.