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Thompson studied law under James Kent and was admitted to the bar in 1792. Two years later he married Sarah Livingston, thereby allying himself with the Jeffersonian Republicans of the anti-Burr faction in New York. After serving a term in the state legislature, he was appointed to the state Supreme Court in 1802. Thompson served on the state bench until Pres. James Monroe named him secretary of the navy in 1818. In 1823 he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court; and, once certain that his presidential ambitions were hopeless, he accepted. He continued to harbour political hopes, however, and in 1828, without resigning from the bench, he ran for the governorship of New York and, after a caustic campaign, was defeated.
Thompson did not share Chief Justice John Marshall’s nationalist views and dissented from many of his opinions; few of Thompson’s opinions for the court related to constitutional questions. His opinion in Kendall v. United States (1838) contained a passage rejecting the theory, ascribed to Pres. Andrew Jackson, that a president may enforce his own interpretation of the Constitution in executing laws. The passage was deleted from the printed opinion at the request of the attorney general, who denied that the theory had been mentioned in oral argument.
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