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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When George Washington became the first President of the Federal Government under the new Constitution he offered John Jay, an eminent New Y ork jurist and statesman, any post that he might choose. What that choice would be was not known to the public until, at a state dinner, President Washington turned to Jay and said: “You will sit at my right, Mr. Chief Justice.” Then and there the Supreme Court of the United States was launched on its notable career. Of John Jay it is said that he never sought public office throughout his long and unusual career as a public official. He brought to his new task a high order of ability and a wide experience in many fields of endeavor. Born in New Y ork City in 1745 of French Huguenot and Dutch ancestry, and educated at King’s College, now Columbia University, he had served as chief justice of his State, minister to Spain, secretary of foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation and as one of the five commissioners who negotiated the treaty of peace with Great Britain at the close of the Revolution. He was for a time president of the Continenal Congress and was a member of that body when the Declaration of Independence was signed. His name would have appeared on that historic document had he not been detained in New Y ork on State business when the signing took place. Thus it happened that the name of no Chief Justice appears among the signers. As a holdover from the old system Jay was the first Secretary of State in Washington’s cabinet, acting ad interim pending the arrival of Thomas Jefferson in New Y ork. In Jay’s time neither the Supreme Court itself nor public opinion was prepared for the great work later performed by John Marshall. The Su- preme Court as “the sheet anchor of the Constitution” was a conception that came later. Jay ' s most important decision as Chief Justice was Chisolm v. Georgia, which held that a citizen of one State could sue another State and which resulted in the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment to the Con-