Benjamin Robbins Curtis lived from November 4, 1809 to September 15, 1874 and was an American lawyer and judge who served as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1851 to 1857. Curtis was the only Whig justice of the Supreme Court and the first Supreme Court justice to hold a formal law degree, and he is often remembered as one of the two dissenters in the Courts 1857 decision Dred Scott v. Sandford. Curtis resigned from the Supreme Court in 1857 to return to private legal practice in Boston, Massachusetts, and in 1868 he served as President Andrew Johnsons defense lawyer during Johnsons impeachment trial.
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