B. History: The Supreme Court

6237. Beveridge, Albert J. The life of John Marshall. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1919. 4 v. illus. 33-29106 E302.6.M4B582; Law

"Works" cited at end of each volume.

CONTENTS.—1. Frontiersman, soldier, lawmaker, 1755-1788.—2. Politician, diplomatist, statesman, 1789-1801.—3. Conflict and construction, 1800-1815.—4. The building of the nation, 1815-1835.

6238. Jones, William Melville, ed.Chief Justice John Marshall; a reappraisal. Ithaca, N.Y., Published for College of William and Mary [by] Cornell University Press, 1956. xviii, 195 p. 56-3619 Law

Beveridge’s Marshall is a detailed study of the world and life of the most noted of the early Chief Justices of the Supreme Court, who assumed that post in 1801 and held it until his death 34 years later. Perhaps the greatest contribution made by Marshall (1755-1835) to the constitutional development of the United States was the consolidation of an independent judiciary through an active use of the principle of judicial review, but this was only one of the many contributions which are here analyzed in great detail. It is with Marshall’s work as Chief Justice that the author is chiefly concerned, but to contribute to the understanding of Marshall’s greatest opinions much space has been allocated to discussions of the subject’s experience as an inhabitant of frontier Virginia, soldier, legislator, lawyer, politician, diplomat, and statesman, and to the history of his period, the actions and opinions of those about him, the state of the nation, the condition of the people, and the tendency of the popular thought of the era. The partisanship of Senator Beveridge is self-evident: Marshall is glorified while others, such as Thomas Jefferson, are relegated to the ranks of the sinners. Chief Justice John Marshall; a Reappraisal is largely composed of papers presented by various scholars at a conference held at the College of William and Mary (Williamsburg, Va.) in 1955 as one of the events of the Marshall Bicentennial Program. A foreword by Chief Justice Earl Warren and an introduction by Professor Carl B. Swisher are followed by discussions of Marshall in relation to the political and professional life of his times, the significance of his thought as measured by present-day standards, and his contributions to judicial review and to American law in general.

6239. Ewing, Cortez A. M. The Judges of the Supreme Court, 1789-1937; a study of their qualifications. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1938. 124 p. 38-28601 Law

A statistical treatment of information concerning the 75 men who sat on the Supreme Court during the period covered. Graphs and statistical tables are used to aid in this analysis of the appointments, the geographical ties, the age at appointment, and the qualifications of education and prior public service of the Justices. Along with many interesting single facts, a few tendencies emerge. The average age of the Justices at appointment rose by a full 10 years over the whole period. Once many Justices served without benefit of college degrees; all recent appointees have them. The percentage of Justices from the South has steadily decreased since 1789.

6240. Haines, Charles G. The role of the Supreme Court in American government and politics. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1944-57. 2 v. 57-10498 Law

Volume 2 by Charles Grove Haines and Foster H. Sherwood.

CONTENTS.—[1] 1789–1835.—[2] 1835-1864.

Professor Haines of the University of California at Los Angeles died in 1948, leaving only three chapters of his second volume in completed form. It was finished by one who had been his student, research assistant, and colleague, but it only reaches 1864 instead of 1885, as Haines had intended. Haines embarked on a new history of the Court because he thought that the extent to which it and its Judges "have participated in and have influenced the political and partisan activities of the time" was insufficiently explored; and because the conservative and nationalist viewpoints had been too frequently adopted, to be neglect of "the liberal and democratic approach," and the views of critics of the Court. The Court had been the object of persistent attacks for more than a decade when Jackson’s election seemed to herald a new day. "But it was not until the end of his second administration that Jackson was able to appoint justices who could change the current of federal judicial decisions. And the change then inaugurated was far from as significant and far-reaching as Democratic leaders anticipated." Volume 2, in fact, is largely a demonstration of continuity between the Marshall Court and the Taney Court. On the whole, "the federal judicial power was more firmly established and far broader in extent at the end of the Taney period than at the beginning."

6241. Howe, Mark De Wolfe. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. v. 1. The shaping years, 1841-1870. Cambridge, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957. 330 p. illus. 57-6348 Law

6242. Holmes, Oliver Wendell. The mind and faith of Justice Holmes; his speeches, essays, letters and judicial opinions, selected and edited with introduction and commentary by Max Lerner. Boston, Little, Brown, 1943. L, 474 p. 43-6772 Law

"Note on the Holmes literature": [452]–460.

Following a decade and a half of writing, practicing, and teaching, Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935), son of a Bostonian poet, essayist, and physician of the same name, was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in 1882; 20 years later he went to the Supreme Court of the United States, from which he did not retire until 1932. During his 50 years on the State and Federal benches, Holmes was noted for writing opinions in a forceful and epigrammatic style. He was called a legal technician, a humanistic thinker, and a great human figure. All of these he was. Professor Howe’s volume is the first of several in a projected biography. The years 1841-70 were, in the author’s opinion, the prologue to Holmes’ life of achievement; in them he underwent the influences which molded his character and outlook whether found in the circle of his family and friends, on the battlefield of Antietam, or at mid-century Harvard. With Holmes opening his own law office, assuming the coeditorship of the American Law Review, becoming university lecturer on constitutional law in Harvard College, and beginning work on his edition of Kent’s Commentaries (no. 6277), this volume ends. TheMind and Faith of Justice Holmes is an attempt, in the editor’s words, "to give a rounded portrait of the mind and faith of one who was perhaps the most complete personality in the history of American thought." Each group of selections is prefaced by a note presenting background information.

6243. Hughes, Charles Evans. The Supreme Court of the United States, its foundation, methods and achievements; an interpretation. Garden City, N.Y., Garden City Pub. Co., 1936. 269 p. (Columbia University lectures. George Blumenthal Foundation) 37-1208 JK1561.H8 1936

Hughes’ six lectures were delivered in 1927, 11 years after his resignation as Associate Justice and 3 years before his return to the Court as Chief Justice. They have, ever since their original publication by the Columbia University Press in 1928, been regarded as an admirable concise treatment of their subject. The eminent jurist disclaimed any intention of competing with Warren’s history of the Court or with treatises on constitutional law; he aimed only "to assist those, who are not aiming to become legal scholars, to understand something of its origin, of the principles that govern it, of its methods and of the important results of its works." In an outstanding chapter on "The Court at Work," he says that the Judges bear "the heaviest burden of severe and continuous intellectual work that our country knows." "Liberty, Property and Social Justice" is the title borne by the two concluding lectures; at the end he finds the Court to be the indispensable guardian of all three. "The ends of social justice are achieved through a process by which every step is examined in the light of text the principles which are our inheritance as a free people."

6244. King, Willard L. Melville Weston Fuller, Chief Justice of the United States, 1888-1910. New York, Macmillan, 1950. 394 p. illus. 50-8032 Law

Bibliography: p. 343-347.

Born in Augusta, Maine, Fuller (1833-1910) removed to Chicago in 1856, a year after being admitted to the Maine bar. The years preceding his appointment to the Chief Justiceship of the UnitedStates were occupied by his very active and general law practice, and by his conspicuous role in the affairs of the Democratic Party. Possessed of quiet humor, courage, a sense of nonpartisanship, and a wide range of scholarship, together with kindliness, human sympathy, and modesty, Fuller’s most remarkable abilities lay in managing the business of the Supreme Court. The author of this finely drawn portrait concludes that it was Fuller’s character rather than his intellect which captured for him the respect and confidence of the legal profession and of the public. He was an embodiment of the dignity of the Supreme Court.

6245. Klinkhamer, Marie Carolyn, Sister. Edward Douglas White, Chief Justice of the United States. Washington, Catholic University of America Press, 1943. 308 p. A 44-427 Law

Bibliography: p. 296-306.

The second Southern Roman Catholic appointed to preside over the Supreme Court, and the first Associate Justice to be elevated to the Chief Justiceship, White (1845-1921) was early active on the bench and in the politics of his native Louisiana. (His middle name is usually spelled Douglass) In 1891 he took his seat in the United States Senate, and three years later was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Cleveland. He remained upon that bench for 27 years, after 16 of which he was raised to the Chief Justiceship by President Taft, in 1910. The author declares that White’s greatest contributions while on the High Court were made in the field of administrative law, but his opinions in the fields of procedure, contracts, interstate commerce, taxation, and due process are also subjected to analysis. The study of his decisions is preceded by a biographical essay. The appendixes contain tables of cases in the Louisiana and United States reports in which White’s opinions are recorded; also given are the names of the Justices who concurred with him or dissented.

6246. Mason, Alpheus Thomas. Brandeis, a free man’s life. New York, Viking Press, 1946. 713 p. illus. 46-25268 JK1519.B7M3 Law

6247. Brandeis, Louis Dembitz. The social and economic views of Mr. Justice Brandeis, collected with introductory notes by Alfred Lief. With a foreword by Charles A. Beard. New York, Vanguard Press, 1930. xxi, 419 p. 3-30043 Law

6248. Brandeis, Louis Dembitz. The unpublished opinions of Mr. Justice Brandeis; the Supreme Court at work, by Alexander M. Bickel. With an introd. by Paul A. Freund. Cambridge, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957. xxi, 278 p. illus. 57-9069 Law

Brandeis (1856-1941), the son of Bohemian Jewish parents who came to the United States in the ranks of the "Forty-eighters," studied with distinction at Harvard Law School, and was soon engaged in a varied and lucrative law practice in Boston. His legal interests were as wide in scope as his extralegal ones. Labor, trusts, railroads, insurance, finance, and even conservation all occupied him in his role as counsel and investigator. He achieved fame as a reformer bent on ameliorating the evils and injustices which had developed with industrial capitalism. President Wilson’s nomination of Brandeis for the Supreme Court in 1916 precipitated a long and bitter wrangle, but eventually, with no little aid from Wilson himself, the Senate’s confirmation was forthcoming. From then until his retirement in 1939 Brandeis’ opinions regularly expressed his belief in the value of free institutions and democratic processes, which provided the best means of enhancing the dignity and potentialities of the individual. The greater portion of Mr. Mason’s biography is concerned with Brandeis’ pre-Court career and portrays a great advocate engaged in argument on behalf of what he conceived to be the basic principles of human freedom. The Social and Economic Views of Mr. Justice Brandeis is a collection of his opinions, together with a few of his briefs, speeches, and articles, arranged under the categories of labor problems, regulation of business, public utility economics, guarantees of freedom, prohibition and taxation, and State and nation. Derived from Brandeis’ private papers relating to his service on the Supreme Court, The Unpublished Opinions of Mr. Justice Brandeis, 11 in all, comprise, with Mr. Bickel’s essays constructed from information found in the papers, an exposition of the working of Brandeis’ mind, and of the processes by which judicial judgments are arrived at.

6249. Mason, Alpheus Thomas. Harlan Fiske Stone: pillar of the law. New York, Viking Press, 1956.914 p. illus. 56-10404 Law

"Note on Stone’s legal writings": p. 888-891.

6250. Konefsky, Samuel Joseph. Chief Justice Stone and the Supreme Court. With a prefatory note by Charles A. Beard. New York, Macmillan, 1945. xxvi, 290 p. A46-501 JK1519.S8K6 1945; Law

Professor Mason’s book is a detailed and scholarly account of the life and character of the only man who occupied consecutively every seat on the bench of the U. S. Supreme Court. Appointed to the Court in 1925, Stone (1872-1946) was promotedto Chief Justice in 1941. Emphasis is placed upon Stone’s career on the Court, and upon the inner workings of that tribunal. Born in the New Hampshire hills, the late Chief Justice throughout his life took each task as it came to him, whether as teacher, attorney, government official, or judge, and performed it thoroughly and capably. This quality, together with his balance and dignity, brought him advancement despite his lack of a spectacular personality. "Respect for facts, unremitting intellectual effort in the face of social perplexities, gave him an understanding that on occasion led to what observers identified as the liberal position. The accolade was unwanted and not wholly deserved . . . By tempering predilection with restraint and craftsmanship, he made the personal preference for social policy but one factor in his quest for judgment . . . He became the statesman without ceasing to be the lawyer." Dr. Konefsky’s Columbia University dissertation concentrates upon Stone’s contributions to constitutional doctrine and his conception of the judicial function, against a background of the larger trends of constitutional development and the conditions which gave rise to the controversies brought before the Supreme Court from 1925 to 1943. Not having, as did Mason, Stone’s papers as a source, the author relied principally upon judicial opinions as a basis for his discussion. Characterized as "a leader of that liberal jurisprudence of which Holmes and Brandeis were the trail-blazers," Stone is judged in the concluding chapter to have been a great advocate of "an enlightened view of the judicial function."

6251. Pollard, Joseph P. Mr. Justice Cardozo; a liberal mind in action. With a foreword by Roscoe Pound. New York, Yorktown Press, 1935. 327 p. 35-6010 Law

An admiring discussion on a lay level of the opinions of Benjamin Nathan Cardozo (1870-1938), who for 18 years served on the New York Court of Appeals (1914-1932) and for 6 on the U. S. Supreme Court (1932-1938). In no sense a biography, it studies a mind as revealed in judicial action in fields of litigation such as personal injury, crime, social welfare, labor, libel, and censorship, to name a few. It dwells for the most part on Cardozo’s longer service on the State court, and concludes with a brief account of his first two years on the High Court during the launching of the New Deal.

6252. Pritchett, Charles H. Civil liberties and the Vinson Court. [Chicago] University of Chicago Press, 1954. 296 p. 54-8459 Law

A sequel to the author’s The Roosevelt Court below, which concentrates on the problem of civil liberties as encountered by the Supreme Court under the leadership of Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson (1890-1953; appointed in 1946) in such fields as free speech, denizenship, racial segregation, and criminal prosecution. It explores the motivations of the individual Justices in their opinions upon cases within these fields. The author concludes with a searching analysis of what the Court ought to do to improve its relationship to the free society of which it is the constitutional guardian.

6253. Pritchett, Charles H. The Roosevelt Court; a study in judicial politics and values, 1937-1947. New York, Macmillan, 1948. xvi, 314 p. 48-4203 JK1561.P7

The primary purpose of this work is to relate significant constitutional developments of the period to the ideological preference of the members of the Court. It is essentially a study of the politics and values of the Justices named to the Supreme Court by President Roosevelt. The author, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, compiles 25 statistical tables in order to bolster his contention that in differences of opinion on questions of policy, given the same or similar conditions, there is a constant in the alignment of the members of the Court, derivable from their characters and backgrounds.

6254. Pusey, Merlo J. Charles Evans Hughes. New York, Macmillan, 1951. 2 v. (xvi, 829 p.) illus. 51-7851 Law

This authorized biography by a staff writer of the Washington Post is a narration and an interpretation of a career of service to State, nation, and mankind. Lawyer, investigator, teacher, governor, Presidential candidate, Secretary of State, Associated Justice and Chief Justice of the United States: Hughes (1862-1948) was all of these as well as a devoted husband, father, and grandfather. He was the only man to resign from the Court (in 1916, after six years’ service as Associate Justice) in order to campaign for the Presidency, and then to be reappointed, as Chief Justice, 14 years later. Following his retirement from the bench in 1941 until his death seven years later, his counsel was sought by those who remained in office, but Hughes by no means sought the role of a professional elder statesman. In his evaluation of Hughes’ 11-year performance as Chief Justice, the author notes at least four aspects of his work as outstanding: his enhancement of efficiency within the whole Federal court system; his mastery in presiding over the Court and the conferences of its Justices; his positive contributions to the law, notably the firm establishment of the four freedoms of the FirstAmendment as guarantees to the citizen against State actions; and last, but not least in importance, his stalwart and unemotional defense of the Court against efforts at executive domination. A much briefer, but exceedingly lucid and judicious appreciation of his great services in several realms, and especially on the Court, is Dexter Perkins’ volume in The Library of American biography: Charles Evans Hughes and American Democratic Statesmanship (Boston, Little, Brown, 1956. xxiv, 200 p.).

6255. Ragan, Allen E. Chief Justice Taft. Columbus, Ohio, Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 1938. 139 p. ([Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society] Ohio historical collections, v. 8) 38-28150 E762. R25 F486.O526, v. 8; Law

"Index of cases": p. 129–130.

Bibliography: p. 123–128.

This monograph, which originated as a dissertation at Ohio State University, attempts "to determine what contribution Chief Justice William Howard Taft made to the constitutional history of the country" from 1921 to 1930. Some background for his Supreme Court decisions has been provided from his earlier judicial and administrative career. Separate chapters are concerned with Taft’s judgments in cases involving labor, the Federal power over commerce, the limits of State power, restraint of trade, and the 18th Amendment. The author concludes that despite Taft’s industry, legal learning, and impartiality, his decisions lacked color, and "he failed to establish any new lines of constitutional interpretation" which could make his term outstanding. Apart from maintaining the inviolability of property rights against labor, his decisions were sufficiently nationalistic and liberal. Even though his success, under the circumstances, could only be partial, "his prolonged interest in and his tireless labors for judicial reform were his crowning achievements."

6256.Rodell, Fred. Nine men; a political history of the Supreme Court from 1790 to 1955. New York, Random House, 1955. 338 p. 55-8154 Law

The author is a professor of law at Yale University who practices journalism on the side, and his book, which, he says, is not written down to lawyers, is robustly journalistic in manner. Professor Rodell says that he is a liberal and admires liberals, but that his "almost fanatical devotion to that kind of personal integrity that combines intellectual honesty with courage" is more important. The title is meant to imply that the Supreme Court is indistinguishable from the nine men who at any one time are its Justices, that they bring their characters and careers onto the bench with them, and that the Court is therefore "powerful, irresponsible, and human." The book is a vigorous summary of the Court’s history from an advanced liberal point of view, in personal terms, and with most space given to the recent past. The Vinson Court is castigated as inimical to human dignity and democratic decency. Well-informed, never dull, obscure, or difficult, and transparent in its partisanship, Nine Men is well suited to those who dread the technicalities of the subject.

6257. Schwartz, Bernard. The Supreme Court, constitutional revolution in retrospect. New York, Ronald Press Co., 1957. 429 p. 57-9302 Law

In 1937 the President proposed to vitiate the independence of the judiciary by his Court-packing plan, Justices Roberts and Hughes ceased their objections to Federal intervention aimed at resuscitating a prostrated economy, and the Supreme Court handed down a whole group of decisions constituting a decisive break with its previous jurisprudence grounded on laissez-faire. This was the constitutional revolution; Professor Schwartz of the New York University School of Law attempts to trace its consequences through the ensuing 20 years, during which, he thinks, "despite aberrations, notably by certain Justices, the Court’s decisions have followed logical patterns, consistent with the bases" of 1937. As the Federal Government entered a whole new sphere of positive economic activity, the Supreme Court adopted an entirely new attitude toward statutes, refusing to void them so long as rational legislators could have regarded them as reasonable methods of promoting the public welfare. Therefore in 20 years "the Court’s authority vis-à-vis the Congress has all but atrophied," and a drastic shift in the balance of governmental powers has taken place. Professor Schwartz reviews in turn the consequences in the Court’s relation to Congress, the President, the administrative agencies, the inferior courts, the States, and the individual. He also discusses the manner in which the Court’s work has been affected by war and cold war. A concluding chapter, "Anatomy and Pathology of the Court," says that while during the first 10 years the Court overruled too many precedents, it has since let stare decisis provide an essential element of continuity in the law; that the prestige of Justice Holmes has led too many of his successors to deliver dissenting opinions; and that judicial review is basically an undemocratic institution, which in a democratic system should be exercised with rigorous self-restraint.

6258. Swisher, Carl Brent. Roger B. Taney. New York, Macmillan, 1935. 608 p. illus. 35-19101 E340.T2S9; Law

Bibliography: p. 591-598.

Taney (1777-1864) is best remembered for his role in Andrew Jackson’s struggle against the Bank of the United States and for his decision, as Chief Justice of the United States, in the Dred Scott Case. Born into the Roman Catholic gentry of Calvert County, Maryland, Taney had a long and distinguished career which included service as a Maryland legislator and attorney general, Attorney General and Secretary of the Treasury in President Jackson’s Cabinet, and Chief Justice of the United States for almost three decades (1836-64). Taney led the judicial forces seeking a modification of the assumption underlying so many decisions of the Marshall Court: that unchecked and centralized Federal power together with judicial benevolence toward private economic interests would invariably work for the good of the country. Although he received an exceptional amount of denigration or abuse from his contemporaries and from writers of the next two generations, the author feds that Taney well earned the accolade of Charles Evans Hughes: "he was a great Chief Justice."

6259. Trimble, Bruce R. Chief Justice Waite, defender of the public interest. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1938. 320 p. illus. 38-3414 Law

"Table of cases": p. [307]–310.

Bibliography: p. [301]–306.

Waite (1816-88) was an Ohio lawyer of specialized practice and excellent political connections, but had no judidal experience when President Grant put him at the head of the Supreme Court. He was Chief Justice of the United States for 14 years (1874-88) and through careful planning and painstaking toil became, this biographer believes, a great administrator and a judge of recognized ability. Drawn largely from information found in Waite’s letters, public papers, and judicial utterances, this study aims at showing something of Waite’s influence in the solution of the constitutional problems which came to the fore during the Reconstruction period. The opinions which he rendered covered a multitude of those problems: radical Reconstruction legislation, the war amendments, western development, transcontinental railroads, agrarian movements, the control of public utilities and rates, and the relation of the States to the liquor traffic. In all these matters Waite made substantial contributions, the greatest of which, in Mr. Trimble’s estimation, was probably his interpretation of the contract clause of the Constitution, in which he enunciated his doctrine of the "public interest."

6260. Warren, Charles. The Supreme Court in United States history. Rev. ed. Boston, Little, Brown, 1937. 2 v. (814, 812 p.)38-3301 JK1561.W3 1937

First published in 1922.

CONTENTS.—v. 1. 1789-1835.—v. 2. 1836-1918.

A leisurely history of the first century of the Supreme Court, to the death of Chief Justice Waite in 1888; the succeeding 30 years, to the end of World War I, are more briefly summarized in two final chapters (v. 2, p. 690-756). The large-scale portion aims to narrate "a section of our National history connected with the Supreme Court" for laymen and lawyers alike, and "to revivify the important cases decided by the Court and to picture the Court from year to year in its contemporary setting." The background of social, political, and economic controversy out of which the Court’s most famous cases arose is carefully described. Each appointment of a Chief or Associate Justice, including those which were declined, withdrawn, or disapproved by the Senate, is investigated and contemporary reactions sampled at some length. A chronological list of all such appointments appears at the close of volume 2 (p. 757-763). Warren also drew upon the papers of important contemporaries, legal and lay, and the newspaper and magazine press for the reception of important decisions; this is one of the most valuable features of his book. The service of the three first Chief Justices (John Rutledge took his seat and presided over one whole term of the Court before the Senate rejected him) is covered in the first 168 pages, and the remainder of volume 1 is concerned with John Marshall’s 35 epoch-making years. Useful material not easily found elsewhere is contained in Chapter 10, "The Judges and the Court-Rooms." The illustrations include photographs of the Court’s first two (quite small) rooms in the Capitol, and group photographs of the Justices taken in 1865, 1882, and 1899.