William Johnson Jr. (December 27, 1771 – August 4, 1834) 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. When he was 32 years old, Johnson was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Thomas Jefferson. He was the first Jeffersonian Republican member of the Court as well as the second Justice from the state of South Carolina. During his tenure, Johnson restored the act of delivering seriatim opinions. He wrote about half of the dissents during the Marshall Court, leading historians to nickname him the "first dissenter".

Johnson wrote the majority opinion for two major cases (including United States v. Hudson) and hundreds of majority opinions in minor admiralty, land, and insurance cases. He supported a strong federal government in economic matters, leading him to join the majority in cases such as McCulloch v. Maryland, Gibbons v. Ogden, and Fletcher v. Peck, to the dismay of Jefferson and other Republicans.

Johnson's strong federalist opinions while sitting as a circuit justice for the District of South Carolina made him a social pariah in his home state. In 1834, he moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he died later that year from surgery complications. Like most justices on the Marshall Court, Johnson's contributions to the law were overshadowed by Chief Justice John Marshall. Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, Johnson's jurisprudence became a topic of some scholarship.

Early life Johnson was born in St. James Goose Creek Parish (now part of Berkeley County, South Carolina) to William Johnson Sr., a blacksmith who had moved to South Carolina from New York, and Sarah Johnson (née Nightingale). Both of his parents were supporters of the American Revolution. During the Revolution, Johnson Sr. was considered by British authorities to be "one of the most dangerous and important of the rebels." He led Charleston revolutionaries alongside Christopher Gadsden and was the originator of Charleston's Liberty Tree. Following the siege of Charleston, both Johnson Sr. and Gadsden were imprisoned in St. Augustine, Florida by British commander Sir Henry Clinton.Johnson, Bradley T. "The Memoir of Jane Claudia Johnson." Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. XXIX, 1901, p. 34. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=H0I6AQAAMAAJ&q=Sarah+Johnson,+n%C3%A9e+Nightingale, Johnson Jr., alongside his brother and mother (who was also a revolutionary), subsequently fled to New York City, where they lived for the remainder of the Revolution. Following the war, Johnson Sr. was a representative for Charleston in the South Carolina General Assembly.

Johnson was fourteen in the summer of 1787 when delegates met at the Constitutional Convention. According to one Supreme Court historian, "nothing shaped Johnson’s habits of mind more powerfully than the experience of revolution."

In 1790, Johnson graduated from Princeton University first in his class. Three years later, he passed the bar after tutelage under Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Johnson was a member of the Democratic-Republican Party and represented Charleston in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1794 to 1800. In his last term, from 1798 to 1800, he served as Speaker of the House. In 1799, Johnson helped pass a bill to reorganize the state judiciary. Later that year, he was also appointed an associate justice of the state Court of General Sessions and Common Pleas, a position created by Johnson's reorganization. The service on that court also included a position on the state Constitutional Court, the highest court in the state at the time.

In 1794, Johnson married Sarah Bennett, the sister of Thomas Bennett Jr., who later served as Governor of South Carolina. Johnson and Thomas were close friends, and Johnson and his wife named their son Thomas Bennett in honor of him. The couple had eight children together, six of whom survived. They also adopted two refugees from Santo Domingo.

In 1808, Johnson constructed a 2½-story Charleston single house home on Rutledge Avenue. While on the Supreme Court, Johnson owned slaves.

Supreme Court career On March 22, 1804, President Thomas Jefferson nominated Johnson to be an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, as the successor of Alfred Moore. He was confirmed by the United States Senate by voice vote on March 24, 1804, and was sworn into office on May 7, 1804. Jefferson nominated the 32-year-old Johnson because he was from a similar geographic region as Moore, because Johnson's health would allow him to travel regularly (a requirement of the position at the time), and because Johnson adhered to Jeffersonian Republican principles. He was the first member of the Court who was not a Federalist. He was also, and remains, the youngest justice at the start of their Supreme Court tenure at 32 years, 132 days—Joseph Story, who was younger at his time of nomination in 1811, was eight days older than Johnson was at the start of their respective tenures.

In his years on the Court, Johnson developed a reputation as a frequent and articulate dissenter from the Federalist majority. While Chief Justice John Marshall was frequently able to steer the opinions of most of the justices, Johnson demonstrated an independent streak. Johnson restored the practice of delivering seriatim opinions (a separate opinion from the opinion of the Court) and from 1805 through 1833, he wrote nearly half of the Supreme Court's dissenting opinions. For this reason, he has been nicknamed the "first dissenter."

During his tenure, Johnson wrote the majority opinion for only two major cases: United States v. Hudson and Goodwin in 1812, and Mechanics' Bank of Alexandria v. Bank of Columbia in 1820. In U.S. v. Hudson, the Court held that federal courts lacked the power to develop common law crimes, a decision which was celebrated by Jeffersonians. However, in Mechanics' Bank, the Court established federal common law precedent that a federal judge could hear parol evidence to explain a written contractual agreement if the agreement's meaning was ambiguous.Mechanics' Bank v. Bank of Columbia , 18 U.S. 326 (1820). Johnson also wrote over a hundred majority opinions for "arcane land, admiralty, and insurance cases" as well as numerous concurrences. Following 1820, Johnson wrote fewer majority opinions and more dissents. The increase in dissents from Johnson may have been due to influence from Jefferson, who praised the practice and urged Johnson to publish more. Ultimately, Johnson wrote about half of the dissents during the Marshall Court.

Gilchrist v. Collector of Charleston (1808) Following the Chesapeake–Leopard affair in 1807, President Thomas Jefferson signed the Embargo Act, which "expressly granted discretion to the state port collectors to detain any ship that appeared to be violating, or attempting to violate, the embargo." In 1808, shipowner Adam Gilchrist filed a mandamus action with the circuit court after his ship was detained following the direction of Secretary of Treasury Albert Gallatin. In Gilchrist v. Collector of Charleston (1808), Johnson, presiding over the court, ruled that "the collector’s actions would not be justified by Gallatin’s letter because in the embargo act Congress did not sanction the President (or the Department of Treasury) with the discretion to detain ships."Gilchrist v. Collector of Charleston , 10 F. Cas. 355, 355–56 (C.C.S.C. 1808).

The case resulted in immediate backlash. While the Federalist press celebrated the decision, it remained unpopular with the majority of citizens. Between July and October 1808, Johnson publicly debated the decision with Attorney General Caesar Augustus Rodney in a series of letters published in Charleston newspapers. Ultimately, the Jefferson administration believed that the circuit court did not have the right to enforce a writ of mandamus. However, the case remains an important yet often forgotten judicial landmark that helped establish judicial independence.

The decision, Johnson's first major act of independence, was not appreciated by Jefferson. The two men stopped corresponding for a number of years after Gilchrist, and their friendship did not rekindle until Johnson restored their correspondence by offering "rare botanical seeds" to Jefferson. Johnson was nominated for Collector of the Port of Charleston on January 23, 1819, but chose to remain on the Court.

Contract Clause jurisprudence In Fletcher v. Peck (1810), Johnson joined the majority of the Court to hold that a Georgia law voiding land grants given by the state the year prior was unconstitutional.Fletcher v. Peck , 10 U.S. (6 Cranch) 87 (1810). It was the first time the Supreme Court ruled a state law as such. Johnson wrote a concurrence in Fletcher. He did not disagree with the Court's overall holding, but he feared the case may have been "feigned" due to possible collusion between the parties in order to establish precedent. He also disagreed with Marshall's reasoning that the Georgia law violated the Contract Clause. He believed that Marshall's interpretation of the Contract Clause, that impairments to contract obligations violated it, was overly broad and unnecessarily restrictive of state powers in favor of private rights. Instead, he believed the law violated the general principle of law that one could not revoke ownership in something one no longer owned.

In 1819, Johnson joined the majority in Dartmouth College v. Woodward. In Dartmouth, the Court held the Contract Clause applied to private corporations, that a private charter constituted a contract between parties, and that states could not interfere with that contract.Trustees of Dartmouth Coll. v. Woodward , 17 U.S. 518 (1819). Uncharacteristically, Johnson did not write a separate opinion in the case.

However, when the Supreme Court decided the 1823 case of Green v. Biddle, Johnson wrote a separate opinion. In Green, Johnson wrote an opinion that was part dissent, part concurrence. He concurred with the majority opinion that Kentucky's legislative act to restrict the rights of titleholders to their land was illegal but once again, as in Fletcher (1810), Johnson believed that the illegality of the act was due to its violation of general principles of law, and not due to it violating the Contract Clause. He forwent analyzing the Contract Clause as he felt it was unnecessary to the legal question in the case.Green v. Biddle , 1 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 1 (1823). Green v. Biddle was one of the Court's most important Contract Clause cases of the era, further expanding the clause to include public agreements such as the Virginia-Kentucky compact of 1792.

In 1827, Johnson joined Justice Bushrod Washington's majority opinion in Ogden v. Saunders (1827). The opinion held that the Contract Clause barred only retrospective laws affecting contracts, not prospective laws affecting contracts not yet signed.Ogden v. Saunders , 25 U.S. (12 Wheat.) 213 (1827). It was the only constitutional case in which Chief Justice Marshall ever dissented.

Federalism jurisprudence