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In Defence of the Court's Integrity
In Defence of the Court’s Integrity 17 In Defence of the Court’s Integrity: The Role of Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes in the Defeat of the Court-Packing Plan of 1937 Ryan Coates Honours, Durham University ‘No greater mistake can be made than to think that our institutions are fixed or may not be changed for the worse. We are a young nation and nothing can be taken for granted. If our institutions are maintained in their integrity, and if change shall mean improvement, it will be because the intelligent and the worthy constantly generate the motive power which, distributed over a thousand lines of communication, develops that appreciation of the standards of decency and justice which we have delighted to call the common sense of the American people.’ Hughes in 1909 ‘Our institutions were not designed to bring about uniformity of opinion; if they had been, we might well abandon hope.’ Hughes in 1925 ‘While what I am about to say would ordinarily be held in confidence, I feel that I am justified in revealing it in defence of the Court’s integrity.’ Hughes in the 1940s In early 1927, ten years before his intervention against the court-packing plan, Charles Evans Hughes, former Governor of New York, former Republican presidential candidate, former Secretary of State, and most significantly, former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, delivered a series 18 history in the making vol. 3 no. 2 of lectures at his alma mater, Columbia University, on the subject of the Supreme Court.1 These lectures were published the following year as The Supreme Court: Its Foundation, Methods and Achievements (New York: Columbia University Press, 1928). -
Ross E. Davies, Professor, George Mason University School of Law 10
A CRANK ON THE COURT: THE PASSION OF JUSTICE WILLIAM R. DAY Ross E. Davies, Professor, George Mason University School of Law The Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2, Fall 2009, pp. 94-107 (BRJ is a publication of SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research) George Mason University Law and Economics Research Paper Series 10-10 This paper can be downloaded without charge from the Social Science Research Network at http://ssrn.com/abstract_id=1555017 **SABR_BRJ-38.2_final-v2:Layout 1 12/15/09 2:00 PM Page 94 BASEBALL AND LAW A Crank on the Court The Passion of Justice William R. Day Ross E. Davies here is an understandable tendency to date the Not surprisingly, there were plenty of other baseball Supreme Court’s involvement with baseball fans on the Court during, and even before, the period Tfrom 1922, when the Court decided Federal covered by McKenna’s (1898–1925), Day’s (1903–22), Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Pro- and Taft’s (1921–30) service. 13 Chief Justice Edward D. fessional Base Ball Clubs —the original baseball White (1894–1921) 14 and Justices John Marshall Har - antitrust-exemption case. 1 And there is a correspon - lan (1877–1911), 15 Horace H. Lurton (1910–14), 16 and ding tendency to dwell on William Howard Taft—he Mahlon Pitney (1912–22), 17 for example. And no doubt was chief justice when Federal Baseball was decided 2— a thorough search would turn up many more. 18 There is, when discussing early baseball fandom on the Court. -
The Role of Politics in Districting the Federal Circuit System
PUSHING BOUNDARIES: THE ROLE OF POLITICS IN DISTRICTING THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT SYSTEM Philip S. Bonforte† I. Introduction ........................................................................... 30 II. Background ............................................................................ 31 A. Judiciary Act of 1789 ......................................................... 31 B. The Midnight Judges Act ................................................... 33 C. Judiciary Act of 1802 ......................................................... 34 D. Judiciary Act of 1807 ....................................................... 344 E. Judiciary Act of 1837 ....................................................... 355 F. Tenth Circuit Act ................................................................ 37 G. Judicial Circuits Act ........................................................... 39 H. Tenth Circuit Act of 1929 .................................................. 40 I. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Reorganization Act of 1980 ...................................................... 42 J. The Ninth Circuit Dilemma ................................................ 44 III. The Role of Politics in Circuit Districting ............................. 47 A. The Presence of Politics ..................................................... 48 B. Political Correctness .......................................................... 50 IV. Conclusion ............................................................................. 52 † The author is a judicial clerk -
Does Eliminating Life Tenure for Article Iii Judges Require a Constitutional Amendment?
DOW & MEHTA_03_15_21 (DO NOT DELETE) 3/17/2021 6:41 PM DOES ELIMINATING LIFE TENURE FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES REQUIRE A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT? DAVID R. DOW & SANAT MEHTA* ABSTRACT Beginning in the early 2000s, a number of legal academicians from across the political spectrum proposed eliminating life tenure for some or all Article III judges and replacing it with a term of years (or a set of renewable terms). These scholars were largely in agreement such a change could be accomplished only by a formal constitutional amendment of Article III. In this Article, Dow and Mehta agree with the desirability of doing away with life tenure but argue such a change can be accomplished by ordinary legislation, without the need for formal amendment. Drawing on both originalism and formalism, Dow and Mehta begin by observing that the constitutional text does not expressly provide for lifetime tenure; rather, it states that judges shall hold their office during good behavior. The good behavior criterion, however, was not intended to create judicial sinecures for 20 or 30 years, but instead aimed at safeguarding judicial independence from the political branches. By measuring both the length of judicial tenure among Supreme Court justices, as well as voting behavior on the Supreme Court, Dow and Mehta conclude that, in fact, life tenure has proven inconsistent with judicial independence. They maintain that the Framers’ objective of insuring judicial independence is best achieved by term limits for Supreme Court justices. Copyright © 2021 David R. Dow & Sanat Mehta. * David Dow is the Cullen Professor at the University of Houston Law Center; Sanat Mehta, who graduated magna cum laude from Rice University in 2020 with a degree in computer science and a minor in Politics, Law, and Social Thought, is a data analyst at American Airlines. -
Supreme Court Justices
The Supreme Court Justices Supreme Court Justices *asterick denotes chief justice John Jay* (1789-95) Robert C. Grier (1846-70) John Rutledge* (1790-91; 1795) Benjamin R. Curtis (1851-57) William Cushing (1790-1810) John A. Campbell (1853-61) James Wilson (1789-98) Nathan Clifford (1858-81) John Blair, Jr. (1790-96) Noah Haynes Swayne (1862-81) James Iredell (1790-99) Samuel F. Miller (1862-90) Thomas Johnson (1792-93) David Davis (1862-77) William Paterson (1793-1806) Stephen J. Field (1863-97) Samuel Chase (1796-1811) Salmon P. Chase* (1864-73) Olliver Ellsworth* (1796-1800) William Strong (1870-80) ___________________ ___________________ Bushrod Washington (1799-1829) Joseph P. Bradley (1870-92) Alfred Moore (1800-1804) Ward Hunt (1873-82) John Marshall* (1801-35) Morrison R. Waite* (1874-88) William Johnson (1804-34) John M. Harlan (1877-1911) Henry B. Livingston (1807-23) William B. Woods (1881-87) Thomas Todd (1807-26) Stanley Matthews (1881-89) Gabriel Duvall (1811-35) Horace Gray (1882-1902) Joseph Story (1812-45) Samuel Blatchford (1882-93) Smith Thompson (1823-43) Lucius Q.C. Lamar (1883-93) Robert Trimble (1826-28) Melville W. Fuller* (1888-1910) ___________________ ___________________ John McLean (1830-61) David J. Brewer (1890-1910) Henry Baldwin (1830-44) Henry B. Brown (1891-1906) James Moore Wayne (1835-67) George Shiras, Jr. (1892-1903) Roger B. Taney* (1836-64) Howell E. Jackson (1893-95) Philip P. Barbour (1836-41) Edward D. White* (1894-1921) John Catron (1837-65) Rufus W. Peckham (1896-1909) John McKinley (1838-52) Joseph McKenna (1898-1925) Peter Vivian Daniel (1842-60) Oliver W. -
A Supreme Court to Be Proud Of
Ideas and Consequences A Supreme Court to Be Proud Of BY LAWRENCE W. REED n the closing months of the current U.S. Supreme he started a successful law practice in Illinois, where he Court session, pundits of every stripe will be assess- would reside until his elevation to the Supreme Court Iing the impact of recent changes in the Court’s by President Grover Cleveland in 1888. composition. If the justices themselves are interested in As a one-term Democratic legislator in Illinois’s how they measure up, there may be no better standard lower house in 1862, Fuller condemned the Lincoln than the Court’s record under Chief Justice Melville W. administration’s arbitrary arrests, suspension of habeas Fuller. corpus, and other wartime indiscretions as assaults on It’s a sad commentary that in the mainstream media, liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. He opposed courts are tagged with such confusing and superficial both secession and slavery,but didn’t believe in quashing labels as “conservative” or “liberal”—terms dissent and due process to vanquish loaded with political baggage and often them.As a Democratic activist and advis- manipulated by those with an ax to grind. er to candidates for national office, he I prefer more clarifying questions: Does a opposed protectionism as special-interest court interpret law or manufacture it? legislation that hurt consumers. He Does it apply the Constitution according decried irredeemable paper money as a to what its text says or is it willing to aban- form of theft and fraud, even voting to don it to accommodate current whims, forbid the Illinois treasury from receiving trendy ideologies, or alleged “needs” of the greenbacks as payment for state taxes. -
“Crisis”: Charting a Path for Federal Judiciary Reform
University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository University of New Hampshire – Franklin Pierce Law Faculty Scholarship School of Law 7-1-2020 Revisiting and Confronting the Federal Judiciary Capacity “Crisis”: Charting a Path for Federal Judiciary Reform Ryan G. Vacca University of New Hampshire School of Law, [email protected] Peter S. Menell University of California, Berkeley, School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/law_facpub Part of the Courts Commons, and the Judges Commons Recommended Citation 108 Cal. L. Rev. 789 (2020) This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of New Hampshire – Franklin Pierce School of Law at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Law Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Revisiting and Confronting the Federal Judiciary Capacity “Crisis”: Charting a Path for Federal Judiciary Reform Peter S. Menell* and Ryan Vacca** The modern federal judiciary was established well over a century ago by the Judiciary Act of 1891. Over the next seventy years, the structure and core functioning of the judiciary largely remained unchanged apart from gradual increases in judicial slots. By the mid- 1960s, jurists, scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers had voiced grave concerns about the capacity of the federal system to function effectively in the face of ever-increasing caseloads. Heeding calls for reform, in 1972 Congress charged a commission chaired by Senator Roman Hruska to study the functioning of the federal courts and recommend reforms. -
Supreme Court Stenographers and Law Clerks, 1910-1940
JOURNAL OF S UPREME C OURT H ISTORY Fountain Pens and Typewriters: Supreme Court Stenographers and Law Clerks, 1910-1940 CLARE CUSHMAN Until the law clerk function at the U.S. The “clerical” model, practiced by the Supreme Court became standardized in the majority of the Justices between 1886 and 1940s, wide variations in hiring, tenure, 1940, is characterized by the hiring of duties, and remuneration existed. Nonethe- students or graduates from local Washington less, historians have tended to divide the law schools to serve for multiple Terms. staffing culture of the Fuller, White, Taft, and These clerks, often called “private secretar- Hughes Courts neatly into two clerkship ies” or “career stenographers,” have been models. One is the “modern” model, which is largely ignored by historians because they characterized by recruitment of clerks from performed dull clerical tasks for their Justices among the top students at elite national law and did not write memoirs touting their schools such as Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, experiences. Indeed, Justice David J. Brewer with the clerks given substantive legal dismissed the clerk function in 1905 as research duties, rotated after a year or two, “simply a typewriter, a fountain pen, used and then mentored into stellar careers. Horace by the judge to facilitate his work.”2 In 1914, Gray, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Louis D. a reporter noted that the Supreme Court Brandeis, Harlan Fiske Stone, William H. clerks’ purpose was simply “to relieve their Taft, Benjamin N. Cardozo and Charles superiors of much of the drudgery that is Evans Hughes practiced this model, which involved in conning over the briefs and gradually became the institutional norm. -
Open Letter to Justice Clarence Thomas from a Federal Judicial Colleague*
AN OPEN LETTER TO JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS FROM A FEDERAL JUDICIAL COLLEAGUE* A. LEON HIGGINBOTHAM, JR.t November 29, 1991 Dear Justice Thomas: The President has signed your Commission and you have now become the 106th Justice of the United States Supreme Court. I congratulate you on this high honor! It has been a long time since we talked. I believe it was in 1980 during your first year as a Trustee at Holy Cross College. I was there to receive an-honorary degree. You were thirty-one years old and on the staff of Senator John Danforth. You had not yet started your meteoric climb through the government and federal judicial hierarchy. Much has changed since then. At first I thought that I should write you privately-the way one normally corresponds with a colleague or friend. I still feel ambivalent about making this letter public but I do so because your appointment is profoundly important to this country and the world, and because all Americans need to understand the issues you will face on the Supreme Court. In short, Justice Thomas, I write this letter as a public record so that this generation can understand the challenges you face as an Associate Justice to the Supreme Court, and the next can evaluate the choices you have made or will make. The Supreme Court can be a lonely and insular environment. Eight of the present Justices' lives would not have been very * © Copyright 1991, A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.. All rights reserved. t Chief judge Emeritus, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Senior Fellow University of Pennsylvania School of Law. -
Tie Votes in the Supreme Court Justin Pidot
University of Minnesota Law School Scholarship Repository Minnesota Law Review 2016 Tie Votes in the Supreme Court Justin Pidot Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Pidot, Justin, "Tie Votes in the Supreme Court" (2016). Minnesota Law Review. 139. https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr/139 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Minnesota Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Minnesota Law Review collection by an authorized administrator of the Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Article Tie Votes in the Supreme Court Justin Pidot† INTRODUCTION What should the Supreme Court do with a tie vote? Since at least 1792, the Court has followed the rule that where the Justices are evenly divided, the lower court’s decision is af- firmed, and the Supreme Court’s order has no precedential ef- fect.1 Such cases are unusual but hardly scarce. Since 1866, an odd number of Justices have composed the Supreme Court, and when an odd number of individuals vote, that vote typically doesn’t result in a tie.2 Yet due to death, retirement, or recusal, there have been 164 tie votes in the Supreme Court between 1925 and 2015.3 These ties have largely, but not entirely, gone unnoticed, in part because few of them involved particularly contentious cases in the eye of the public.4 † Associate Professor, University of Denver Sturm College of Law. I would like to thank Bob Bone, Alan Chen, Lee Epstein, Tara Leigh Grove, Lee Kovarsky, Nancy Leong, Margaret Kwoka, Alan Morrison, Jim Pfander, Ju- dith Resnick, Allan Stein, and Ben Spencer for sharing their insights and also my research assistant Courtney McVean for all of her help. -
OUR ELEVEN CHIEF JUSTICES, by Kenneth Bernard Umbreit. Harper and Brothers, New York, 1938
Louisiana Law Review Volume 2 | Number 2 January 1940 OUR ELEVEN CHIEF JUSTICES, by Kenneth Bernard Umbreit. Harper and Brothers, New York, 1938. Pp. xiv, 539. $3.75. William L. Prosser Repository Citation William L. Prosser, OUR ELEVEN CHIEF JUSTICES, by Kenneth Bernard Umbreit. Harper and Brothers, New York, 1938. Pp. xiv, 539. $3.75., 2 La. L. Rev. (1940) Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/lalrev/vol2/iss2/18 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Reviews and Journals at LSU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Louisiana Law Review by an authorized editor of LSU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1940] BOOK REVIEWS OUR ELEVEN CHIEF JUSTICES, by Kenneth Bernard Umbreit. Har- per and Brothers, New York, 1938. Pp. xiv, 539. $3.75. This volume, which purports to be a "History of the Supreme Court in Terms of Their Personalities," deals with the lives of the eleven men who, by reason of merit, accident, or the stroke of political lightning, have been called to the office of Chief Jus- tice of the United States. Such a book must of necessity be con- densed, episodic, and to a large extent superficial. John Marshall, whom Beveridge found worthy of four large volumes, must be reduced to eighty-four pages, while Roger Brooke Taney is com- pressed into forty-eight. As a history of the Supreme Court, in terms of personality or anything else, it can have little value. Necessarily there cannot be much that is new. -
The Clerks of the Four Horsemen (Part II, George Sutherland and Pierce Butler), 40 J
Notre Dame Law School NDLScholarship Journal Articles Publications 3-1-2015 The leC rks of the Four Horsemen (Part II, George Sutherland and Pierce Butler) Barry Cushman Notre Dame Law School, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship Part of the Legal Profession Commons Recommended Citation Barry Cushman, The Clerks of the Four Horsemen (Part II, George Sutherland and Pierce Butler), 40 J. Sup. Ct. Hist. 55 (2015). Available at: https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/1138 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Publications at NDLScholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of NDLScholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Clerks of the Four Horsemen (Part II, George Sutherland and Pierce Butler) BARRY CUSHMAN This is the second part of a two-part Ontario, Widdifield moved to Michigan as a article. Please see volume 39, no. 3, pages young boy in 1880 and was naturalized in 368-424 for the Introduction and Part I, Detroit in 1896. He was admitted to practice in discussing the clerks to James C. McReynolds Michigan in 1898, and in Massachusetts and Willis Van Devanter. in 1904. Early in his career, Widdifield handled collections in the office of a Detroit lawyer and practiced with the Traverse City, Michigan firm The Sutherland Clerks of Gilbert & Widdifield. He then moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he was secre- Justice Sutherland served from 1922 to tary and law assistant to the president of the 1938, but during that time he had only four Stanley Electrical Company.2 He first came to clerks.