Scott lived in Charlestown, where he helped found a Sunday school, held inside the local courthouse.
In 1810, William Henry Harrison, Governor of the Indiana Territory, appointed Scott to be Clark County's prosecutor.
Scott and his fellow Justices heard the case Polly v. Lasselle regarding slavery in Indiana.
The case regarded the ownership of an enslaved woman, Polly, by General Hyacinth Laselle of Vincennes.
Scott wrote the unanimous opinion of the court: "The framers of our constitution intended a total and entire prohibition of slavery in this State; and we can conceive of no form of words in which that intention could have been expressed more clearly".
[2] In 1827, while serving on the Supreme Court, the General Assembly made Scott president of a team of five observers to visit Indiana State Seminary in Bloomington and report back to legislature on the success of the school and its students.
Many in the General Assembly were outraged by Scott and Holman's abrupt replacement, but both Stevens and McKinney were eventually confirmed by the legislature to serve on the Supreme Court.
Following William Henry Harrison's victory in the 1840 presidential election, Scott was hired as a registrar at the federal land office in Jeffersonville.