A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States

JOSEPH STORY (1779-1845), one of the most significant lawyers in early American constitutional history, became the youngest US Supreme Court Justice (1811-45) at age 32. He worked closely with Chief Justice John Marshall in developing the legal foundation for American nationalism. Story was also one of the most successful American authors of the first half of the 19th century, with several publications, including Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States and its popular abridged edition.

THE POPULAR EDITION OF A LANDMARK STUDYOF THE U.S. CONSTITUTIONFirst published in 1833, Joseph Story's three-volume Commentaries on the Constitution (1833) was the first extensive study of the Federal Constitution and the standard work of the antebellum era. Story also produced an abridged one-volume edition for advanced students. A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution is a condensed version of his abridgment designed for general readers. Written in a popular manner, it retains the hallmarks of his original work."He has done more than any other English-speaking man in this century to make the law luminous and easy to understand." --Oliver Wendell Holmes on Joseph Story, 1886Apart from James Kent, no man has had greater influence on the development of American law than Joseph Story [1779-1845]. He was Dane Professor of Law at Harvard, where he played a key role in the growth of the school and the establishment of its national eminence, and an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, where he was the author of several landmark decisions, such as Martin v. Hunter's Lessee. His many books, most notably the monumental work Commentaries on the Constitution, have beencited extensively, and he remains an authority today.