National University - Docket Yearbook (Washington, DC)

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EDWARD D. WHITE— 1910-1921

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tice Taney, who leaned toward strict construction to a greater degree than his distinguished predecessor, was more interested in the preservation of individual liberty and less interested in the preservation of property rights. He is best known in connection with the famous Dred Scott decision, which, intended to allay sectional strife by removing the question of slavery exten- sion from politics, had the effect of further inflaming the North and hasten- ing the coming of the Civil War. In the midst of that great conflict Chief Justice Taney died, and Presi- dent Lincoln appointed in his place Salmon Portland Chase, who was born in 1808 in New Hampshire, but who had settled in Ohio. Chase was edu- cated at Dartmouth and Cincinnati College. After serving as Governor and United States Senator he became Lincoln’s first Secretary of the Treas- ury. As head of the Treasury Department he put “In God We Trust” on our coins; as Chief Justice he gave us a popular saying which is quoted almost daily. In a letter dated May 1 7, 1 866, to Horace Greeley, he wrote : “The way to resumption is to resume.” He has been the only Chief Justice to preside over the Senate during the impeachment trial of a President of the United States. Chase’s death occurred in 1873 and President Grant chose to succeed him Morrison Remick Waite (1816-1888), who was born in Connecticut and who was educated at Yale, but who settled in Ohio. Upon Waite’s death in 1888 President Cleveland appointed Melville Weston Fuller (1888-1910) to succeed him. Fuller was a native of Maine and a graduate of Bowdoin, but had gone to Chicago and plunged into an active legal and political career. He has been the only Chief Justice who was small physically, all his predeces- sors and successors thus far having been tall and large men. A natural politician, thoroughly acquainted with the changing industrial conditions of his day, he was perhaps the best business head the Court has ever had.

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Fuller was the first man to be commissioned “Chief Justice of the United States.” All his seven predecessors had been commissioned “Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.” Since Fuller’s ap- pointment the commissions have carried the shorter title. The official title of the head of the Court has varied widely in the different laws dealing with the Court. Even as late as 1926 Congress passed an act providing a salary of $20,500 for “the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.” On one occasion Chief Justice Taft reminded an attorney practic- ing before the Court that “the Chief Justice of the United States,” not “the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States” is the correct title of the head of that institution. When Chief Justice F uller died in 1910 President Taft, a Northerner, a Republican and a Unitarian, did a handsome act by appointing to the Chief Justiceship Edward Douglass White, a Southerner, a Democrat and a Roman Catholic. Nonpartisan though the Court is supposed to be, it has been the only case in which a President has appointed to that office a man of a different political affiliation. White, who was born in Louisiana in 1845, a century after the birth of Chief Justices Jay and Rutledge, was the son and grandson of a member of Congress. Fie served as a private in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, being the fourth man with military experience to become Chief Justice. Jay was a colonel in the New York militia, though he never saw any very active service; Rutledge was active commander of the militia of South Carolina for two years in the Revolution when he was president of his State; and Marshall saw considerable active service as a commissioned officer in the same conflict. After serving in the United States Senate, White was appointed an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court by Presi- dent Cleveland in 1894, and he has been the only man elevated directly from an Associate Justiceship to the Chief Justiceship. Rutledge and Hughes [ 28 ]