John Blair Jr. was an American politician, Founding Father and jurist. He brought extensive political and judicial experience to his appointment as one of the Supreme Court’s first associate justices. Following in his father's political footsteps, Mr. Blair served in a variety of political positions for the commonwealth of Virginia and an even greater variety of judicial posts, first under the commonwealth and then for the state of Virginia.
Background
Mr. Blair was born on April 17, 1732 in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States. He is the son of John Blair, Sr., and Mary Monro Blair. The senior Blair was an important Virginia statesman, having served in the House of Burgesses, on the Governor’s Council, and as acting governor of Virginia in 1758 and 1768. Mr. Blair’s family also possessed significant wealth.
Education
John Blair attended the College of William and Mary and in 1775 went to London to study law at the Middle Temple.
Mr. Blair began a successful law practice in 1765, when elected as the delegate of the College of William and Mary to Virginia’s House of Burgesses. John Blair resigned his legislative seat in 1771 to assume the position of clerk of the Governor’s Council, a post his father had held 30 years earlier.
As events cascaded toward revolution, John Blair increasingly favored independence. In 1769 he signed a nonimportation agreement in protest when the House of Burgesses was dissolved. In 1776 he attended the Virginia constitutional convention, which framed a new form of government for the independent commonwealth, and he served on the committee charged with drafting a constitution and declaration of rights. When the new constitution was ratified, Mr. Blair was elected a member of the Governor’s Council.
By 1777, though, Mr. Blair had resigned this office after the Virginia legislature chose him to sit on the General Court of Virginia, the first of several judicial posts he would ultimately hold. Within two years he assumed the position of chief justice of this court, and in 1780 he was named one of three chancellors to Virginia’s High Court of Chancery.
John Blair’s political and judicial experience resulted in his appointment as a Virginia delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He joined an illustrious company of Virginians George Washington, Edmund Randolph, James Madison, George Mason, and George Wythe and, though he did not participate actively in the debates of the Convention, he signed the final document on behalf of Virginia, together with George Washington and James Madison.
John Blair returned home from Philadelphia to continue his judicial duties and was shortly appointed by the Virginia legislature to take a part in the new Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. But his fellow Virginian, George Washington now president of the United States soon turned to Mr. Blair as his choice to fill one of the first seats on the U.S. Supreme Court.
On September 24, 1789, Mr. Washington named John Jay as chief justice, and John Blair, Jr., James Wilson, William Cushing, John Rutledge, and Robert H. Harrison to form the first Supreme Court. John Blair, along with Mr. Jay, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Cushing, and Mr. Rutledge, accepted this commission.
John Blair was a member of the Federalist Party of the United States. He was devoted to the idea of a permanent union of the newly independent states and loyally supported fellow Virginians James Madison and George Washington at the Constitutional Convention.
Personality
A famous legal scholar, he avoided the tumult of state politics, preferring to work behind the scenes. Mr. Blair was praised for such personal strengths as gentleness and benevolence, and for his ability to penetrate immediately to the heart of a legal question.