William Johnson

William Johnson Jr. lived from December 27, 1771 to August 4, 1834 and was an American attorney, state legislator and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1804 until his death in 1834. Appointed to the Supreme Court at age 32 by President Thomas Jefferson, he was the first Jeffersonian Republican member of the Court and the second justice from South Carolina. During his tenure Johnson restored the practice of delivering seriatim opinions and wrote about half of the dissents issued during the Marshall Court, earning historians nickname for him of the first dissenter. He wrote the majority opinion in United States v. Hudson along with hundreds of majority opinions in minor admiralty, land and insurance cases, and he supported a strong federal government in economic matters, joining the majority in cases such as McCulloch v. Maryland, Gibbons v. Ogden and Fletcher v. Peck, to the dismay of Jefferson and other Republicans. His strong federalist opinions while sitting as circuit justice for South Carolina made him a social pariah in his home state, and in 1834 he moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he died later that year from surgery complications.