John Bannister Gibson

John Bannister Gibson
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
In office 1827–1851
Preceded by	William Tilghman
Succeeded by	Jeremiah S. Black
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
In office 1816–1827
In office 1851–1853
Member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives
In office 1810–1812
Constituency	Cumberland County
Chair of the Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee
In office 1811–1812
Personal details
Born	(1780-11-08)November 8, 1780 Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, US
Died	May 3, 1853(1853-05-03) (aged 72) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Sarah Work Galbraith
Relations	General George Gibson (brother)
Children	Eight
Alma mater	Dickinson College

John Bannister Gibson (November 8, 1780 – May 3, 1853) was a Pennsylvania jurist. He served on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from 1816 to his death in 1853, and was chief justice on the court for 24 years. "During his highly influential career, he wrote more than twelve hundred opinions and was known for maintaining a generally restrictive view of judicial authority, [and] aiding measures for internal improvements and public works"[.] With some reluctance, Gibson also strictly followed precedent and legal text to deny the franchise to Pennsylvania’s free persons of African descent (Hobbs v. Fogg, 6 Watts 553 (Pa. 1837)).^[1]

Born in what is now Perry County, Pennsylvania (in 1780 it was part of Cumberland County), Gibson was named for John Banister, a Virginia hero of the American Revolution. Gibson's father, George Gibson, also fought in the war and remained in service after its end. George Gibson was killed at St. Clair's defeat in an expedition to the Great Black Swamp in northwest Ohio during the Northwest Indian Wars, when his son John was eleven years old.

In 1795 or 1796, Gibson was sent to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he remained about four years. Apparently Gibson did not take his degree. Justice Hugh Brackenridge of the state Supreme Court, who lived in Carlisle, took some notice of the tall and awkward young student, and gave him the use of his library, the best in the town, which Gibson greatly appreciated.

On leaving college, Gibson read law in Carlisle, in the office of Thomas Duncan. In 1803, Gibson was admitted to the bar in Cumberland County, and later in the same year at Pittsburgh. In 1804, he was admitted in Beaver County, and he also practiced for a short time in Hagerstown, Maryland.

In 1809, Gibson was elected as a Democrat from Cumberland County to the House of Representatives of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, and again in 1810. He served for the 1810-1811, and 1811-1812 terms of the Assembly. As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, he secured the passage of the Act of 1812, abolishing survivorship as an incident of joint tenancy (Pennsylvania Act of Mar. 31, 1812, P.L. 259, No. 194, Cl. 68).

While serving in the Assembly, Gibson represented an enslaved four-year-old boy named John, arguing that he should be freed under Pennsylvania Law (Commonwealth v. Blaine, 4 Binn. 186 (Pa. 1811)) because "[t]he most strict conformity with the Pennsylvania Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery . . . should be required in favor of liberty." The state supreme court, however, ruled in favor of John's enslaver.

Gibson was married in 1812 to Sarah Work Galbraith of Carlisle. They had eight children, five of whom survived to adulthood.^[2] He was active in his local Episcopal Church.

In 1813, Governor Simon Snyder appointed Gibson as judge of the trial-level Court of Common Pleas of the new Eleventh judicial district, which included Tioga, Bradford, Susquehanna, and Luzerne counties. Gibson took up his residence at Wilkes-Barre, where he first held court in a log-house.

On June 27, 1816, he was appointed by Governor Simon Snyder as an associate-justice of the Supreme Court, to fill the place vacated by the death of his friend, Hugh Brackenridge. He joined Chief Justice William Tilghman and Justice Jasper Yeates. Placed, at the age of thirty-six, in so responsible and dignified a position, and brought into close contact with the wide learning and experience of these veteran justices, Gibson quickly realized his deficiencies. He studied laboriously during the first years of his service on the supreme bench, and became engrossed in the law. He acquired a vast and accurate knowledge which gave him, as the years passed, a sureness and mastery, rarely equaled by any judge, in dealing with all questions presented.

Gibson's first opinion on the supreme court was a concurrence that the Pennsylvania-born child of a fugitive slave from Maryland was free, and that neither she nor her mother could be returned to the mother's former enslaver. (Commonwealth (ex rel. Eliza) v. Holloway, 2 Serg. & Rawle 305, 308 (Pa. 1816)).

In 1817, on the death of Justice Yeates, Thomas Duncan was appointed to the vacancy, largely, it is supposed, through the influence of Gibson. He served with his preceptor on the bench as his junior associate. Gibson was promoted to Chief Justice in 1827.

A constitutional amendment in 1838 changed the tenure of office of the Supreme Court justices from life to a term of fifteen years. It provided that the commissions of the justices then in office should expire at intervals of three years, in the order of their seniority as of January 1, 1839. Justice Gibson had opposed this change on broad grounds of public policy. At the suggestion of his associates, he resigned and was reappointed by Governor Joseph Ritner in 1838, thus prolonging his term by several years. This action was criticized by the newspapers.

An 1850 state constitutional amendment provided that the justices of the Supreme Court should be elected instead of being appointed by the governor. At the Democratic Party convention in 1851, the only member of the existing court who was placed upon the ticket was Chief Justice Gibson.

"The nomination," says Judge Porter, "was an act of high homage to his character. It was the result of that feeling. He was more than seventy years of age, too old, if he had been willing, to accomplish by his own energy anything to promote his nomination, and as unacquainted as a child with partisan politics and with party leaders. In one sense, the nomination was a rebuke to himself. He had seldom lost an opportunity to express his want of confidence in popular action, and his disapprobation of every movement designed to enlarge the boundaries of popular power. He took as little pains to conceal his sentiments on this point as on all others, and while he expressed them decorously he uttered them boldly. It must, therefore, have cost him some surprise, if not compunction, to find that carrying into effect the very movement of which he had most horror, the people, through their representatives, chose to retain their hold of him as one of their most important public servants."^{[citation needed]}

The justices drew lots for the terms, the law providing that one of them should go out of office every three years. Jeremiah Black drew the shortest term, and with it the office of chief justice. Gibson was commissioned as associate in the court where he had sat as chief justice for twenty-four years.

Gibson received an honorary LL.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1838,^[3] and another from Harvard University in 1847.^[4]

Soon after his election as justice, Gibson became severely ill. His mind was as sharp as ever, but he was left physically frail. In the spring of 1853, he went to Philadelphia, against the protest of his physicians, to attend the meeting of the court. He died there on May 3, in his room in the United States Hotel, on Chestnut Street between Fifth and Sixth. He was buried at the Old Graveyard in Carlisle, close to the graves of his colleagues, justices Brackenridge and Duncan.

There are inscriptions on three sides of the four-sided obelisk marking his burial place:

Some of Gibson's correspondence can be found in the Library of Congress.^[5]

• 
  Self-portrait by Gibson at about age 21 (ca. 1801).
• 
  Signature of Gibson on a paper regarding jury instructions, April 19, 1827. (From the private collection of H. Blair Howell.)
• 
  Gibson's wife Sarah Work Galbraith
• 
  Congress Hall in Philadelphia, home of the state supreme court from 1824 to the end of Gibson's term. During the first years of his judicial service the court met in Independence Hall.
• 
  Gibson's grave monument at the Old Graveyard in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

• Eakin v. Raub
• Black suffrage in Pennsylvania

This work incorporates material from Samuel Dreher Matlack, "JOHN BANNISTER GIBSON. 1780-1853." in William Draper Lewis, Great American Lawyers (1909), pp. 351–404.

• Online Books by John Bannister Gibson
• "John Bannister Gibson", Encyclopedia Dickensia, Dickinson College
• "Memoirs of John Bannister Gibson" (1890), by Thomas B. Roberts
• Text of Hobbs v. Fogg