"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

In 1817, on the death of Justice Yeates, Thomas Duncan was appointed to the vacancy, largely, it is supposed, through the influence of Gibson.

A constitutional amendment in 1838 changed the tenure of office of the Supreme Court justices from life to a term of fifteen years.

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.

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.

[4] Gibson was posthumously honored by inclusion of his name on a mosaic in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., along with nine other highly-distinguished American lawyers and judges (see picture in gallery, below).

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.