Justice Joseph Story
[appointed by President James Madison--served from Feb 3, 1812 -- Sept 10, 1845]
[U.S.Congressman 1808-1809]
[Harvard Law School professor 1821-1845]

On the dangers inherent in the Supreme Court:
"The truth is, that, even with the most secure tenure of office, during good behavior, the danger is not, that the judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion, and in defence of private rights or public liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day."
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On Christianity and Laws in America:
“I verily believe Christianity necessary to the support of civil society. One of the beautiful boasts of
our municipal jurisprudence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law. . . There never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying its foundations.”
[Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States; and 1829 speech at Harvard]
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On witnesses in an American court of Law:
“Infidels and pagans were banished from the halls of justice as unworthy of credit.”
[Life and letters of Joseph Story, Vol. II 1851, pp. 8-9]
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On the relationship between Christianity and our Government
when the First Amendment was written:
"We are not to attribute this prohibition of a national religious establishment [in the First Amendment] to an indifference to religion in general, and especially to Christianity (which none could hold in more reverence than the framers of the Constitution)"
“At the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration [i.e., the First Amendment], the general, if not the universal sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. Any attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.”
[Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, and A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States]
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On the First Amendment:
"The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects [denominations] and to prevent any national ecclesiastical patronage of the national government."
[J. Story, III, Commentaries on the Constitution [section] 1871 (1833)]

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