National University - Docket Yearbook (Washington, DC)

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The Chief Justices of the United States ALL Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States hold office dur- ing good behavior, which in most cases is tantamount to life tenure, and accordingly, from the historian’s point of view, the lives of the Chief Justices are comparable to the reigns of kings rather than the administra- tions of Presidents or other officers elected for specific terms. The short span of our existence as a nation, as well as the length of the terms of the Chief Justices, is graphically illustrated by the fact that only eleven men, including the present occupant, have held that high office. Three of these were appointed by President Washington, while Presidents Adams, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, Cleveland, Taft, Harding and Hoover appointed one each. Twenty-two of our thirty Presidents who preceded Franklin Delano Roosevelt never had the opportunity to appoint a Chief Justice. Such an opportunity has come to only two Democratic Presidents since the election of Jefferson. T he average term of the Chief Justices has been slightly more than thirteen years. John Marshall served thirty-four years and Richard Brooke Taney twenty-eight, a total of sixty-four years, or nearly half the time since the establishment of the Federal Government under the Constitution. Many men still living have known, or might have known, seven of the eleven Chief Justices, and four of them have been alive since the birth of most of the present students of the National University Law School. In one sense the Supreme Court of the United States began life as an orphan. Unlike the other two great departments of the Federal Govern- ment, it had no counterpart under the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution provided simply that “the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” The number of the judges and their manner of selection, as well as a definition of the juris- diction of the Supreme Court, were left to Congress.

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CHARLES EVANS HUGHES Chief Justice of the United States

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