Charles Evans Hughes in the United States
Charles Evans Hughes
Charles Evans Hughes (1862-1948), American jurist and statesman, thought by many to have been the greatest chief justice of the United States since John Marshall.
Hughes was born in Glens Falls, New York, on April 11, 1862. He was educated at Brown University and the law school of Columbia University. In 1884 he was admitted to the New York bar and practiced law in New York City for most of the following 22 years. In 1905, Hughes served as counsel for special committees of the New York state legislature investigating both the gas companies of New York City and the financial practices of life insurance companies in the state. He established a national reputation for fearless integrity, and his findings resulted in a reorganization of the state laws governing life insurance companies and became a model for subsequent similar inquiries. (1)
In this Section: Charles Evans Hughes, Charles Evans Hughes Political Career and Charles Evans Hughes Court Tenure.
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Notes and References
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Charles Evans Hughes in the United States
Charles Evans Hughes(1862-1948), American lawyer and statesman, was born at Glen Falls, N.Y., April 11 1862. He graduated from Brown University in 1881. He then studied law at Columbia (LL.B. 1884). He was admitted to the bar in 1884 and for seven years practised in New York City. From 1891 to 1893 he was professor of law at Cornell and then resumed practice in New York City, serving at the same time for several years as lecturer in the New York Law school. In 1905 he was counsel for a commission appointed by the New York Legislature to investigate the cost of gas, and in the same and the following year was counsel for a legislative committee for investigating life-insurance companies. This investigation revealed many irregularities in the management of the companies and led to the passage by the Legislature of New York and of other states of remedial legislation. The same year he was nominated by the Republicans for mayor of New York City but declined to run. In 1906 he was elected governor of New York State, defeating William Randolph Hearst, and was reëlected in 1908. He resigned in Oct. 1910 after being appointed associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by President Taft. In 1916 he resigned from the Supreme Court on being nominated for the presidency by the Republicans, but was narrowly defeated by President Woodrow Wilson, who had been renominated by the Democrats. Hughes”s election was considered assured when the campaign began; but though he “stumped” the country widely he disappointed the people because he took no definite position on any of the specific questions involving the stand of America in the World War and especially as regards the sinking of the “Lusitania.” The result of the election was doubtful until a full count had been made, and eventually hinged upon Minnesota and California, normally Republican states. Hughes carried Minnesota by a few hundred votes but lost California by a few thousand. The electoral vote was 276 for Wilson against 255 for Hughes. The popular vote was 9,116,000 for Wilson against 8,547,000 for Hughes. The following year he again entered upon the practice of law in New York City. In 1917 he was appointed chairman of the Draft Appeals Board of New York City by Governor Whitman, and the following year was special assistant to the U.S. Attorney-General, in charge of the investigation of alleged waste and delay in the construction of aircraft. He was president of the New York State Bar Association in 1917-8 and of the Legal Aid Society 1917-9. He was opposed to Article X. of the League of Nations Covenant and urged special recognition of the Monroe Doctrine. He was the leader of the New York Bar Assn. in its opposition to the expulsion of the Socialists from the N.Y. State Legislature in 1920. In 1921 he entered the Cabinet of President Harding as Secretary of State. He was one of the four U.S. delegates to the Conference on Limitation of Armament, held in Washington, D.C., Nov. 1921, and was elected permanent chairman.
Alternative Biography
HUGHES, Charles Evans, American jurist: b. Glens Falls, N. Y., 11 April 1862, died in 1948. He attended the public schools and Madison, now Colgate, University, 1876-78, and was graduated from Brown University in 1881; he then taught Greek and Latin in the Delaware Academy, Delhi, N. Y., studying law at the same time. In 1882 he went to New York city, where he continued to study law. He received honorary degrees of LL.D. from Brown in 1906, from Columbia, Knox aad Lafayette in 1907, from Union and Colgate in 1908, from George Washington University, Washington, D. C., in 1909, from Williams, Harvard and Pennsylvania in 1910, and from Yale in 1915. He studied law in the office of Gen. Stewart L. Woodford and in the Columbia Law School, from which he was graduated with the degree of LL.B. in 1884; he was admitted to the bar the same year and practised in New York city. He won the prize fellowship at Columbia Law School and was a Fellow 1884-87; he was a member of the firm of Carter, Hughes & Cravath, 1887-91; professor of law at Cornell University, 1891-93; special lecturer, 1893-95, and also a special lecturer at the New York Law School, 1893-1900. He returned to his old law practice in New York as a member of his old firm, which became Carter, Hughes & Dwight, and in 1904, on the death of Mr. Carter, the firm became Hughes, Rounds & Schurman. In 1905 he was made counsel for the legislative committee, headed by Senator Stevens, appointed by the New York State legislature to investigate the Consolidated Gas Company and the price of New York city gas, and he framed the 80-cent gas and the assault proof bills, which became laws. In the same year, while in Europe, he was recalled to act as attorney for the Armstrong legislative insurance committee, and drew up a set of insurance laws which were adopted and which have meant the effective stoppage of waste and theft which had run into millions of dollars annually. In 1906 he was appointed special assistant to United States Attorney-General William Henry Moody, in the investigation of the coal trust; in the same year he was nominated for governor of New York State on the Republican ticket and was the only Republican candidate elected on the ticket, defeating William Randolph Hearst, the Democratic nominee, and was re-elected in 1908.
In 1908 Governor Hughes was regarded as a possible candidate for President of the United States as successor to Theodore Roosevelt, the delegates from New York giving him a complimentary vote in the convention. On 25 April 1910 he was appointed by President Taft an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court He was sworn in 10 Oct. 1910. and was succeeded as governor by Lieut.-Gov. Horace White, who served the remaining three months of the term. As governor he gave to New York State one of the most efficient administrations in its history. He carried many of his measures against the strong opposition of the legislature and other political forces, by gaining for them popular opinion through speeches made throughout tho State. The most important amongst them were: Creation of State Probation Commission, Public Service Commissions, State Highway Commission, New Apportionment Act, Anti-Race Track Gambling Act, Direct Primary Law. During his administration the State also celebrated in a worthy manner the tercentenary of the discovery of Lake Champlain and of the Hudson River. He resigned from the United States Supreme Court after having been nominated on 10 June 1916 by the Republican National Convention for the presidency. After his defeat by President Wilson in November of that year he returned to the practise of his profession.
After the entrance of the United States into the World War, he was appointed chairman of the New York District Board of Exemption. In the spring of 1918 President Wilson placed in his hands the investigation of supposed irregularities in connection with the building of airplanes for the United Stales army and navy, and he submitted his findings to the President October 1918. He is a member of the American, New York State and New York city bar associations, a Fellow of Brown University, a trustee of Chicago University and of the Rockefeller Foundation, and president of the Legal Aid Society. His speeches have been published as ‘Addresses of C. E. Hughes’ (revised ed., New York 1916); his messages, etc., as governor of New York have been collected as ‘Public Papers of C. E. Hughes, Governor, 1907-10’ (Albany 1908-10). He has also published ‘Conditions of Progress in Democratic Government’ (Yale Lectures on the Responsibilities of Citizenship, New Haven 1910). Consult Ransom, W. H., ‘Charles E. Hughes, etc.’ (New York 1916).
Main Source: The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)
Developments
Hughes returned to government office in 1921 as Secretary of State under President Harding. On November 11, 1921, Armistice Day (changed to Veterans Day), the Washington Naval Conference for the limitation of naval armament among the Great Powers began. The major naval powers of Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the United States were in attendance as well as other nations with concerns about territories in the Pacific — Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal and China.[14]
The American delegation was headed by Hughes and included Elihu Root, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Oscar Underwood, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate. The conference continued until February 1922 and included the Four-power pact (December 13, 1921), Shantung Treaty (February 4, 1922), Five-Power Treaty, the Nine-Power Treaty (February 6, 1922), the “Six-power pact” that was an agreement between the Big Five Nations plus China to divide the German cable routes in the Pacific, and the Yap Island agreement.[15]
Hughes continued in office after Harding died and was succeeded by Coolidge, but resigned after Coolidge was elected to a full term. In 1922, June 30, he signed the Hughes–Peynado agreement, that ended the occupation of Dominican Republic by the United States.
Various appointments
In 1907, Gov. Charles Evans Hughes became the first president of newly formed Northern Baptist Convention. He also served as President of the New York State Bar Association.
After leaving the State Department, he again rejoined his old partners at the Hughes firm, which included his son and future United States Solicitor General Charles E. Hughes, Jr., and was one of the nation”s most sought-after advocates. From 1925 to 1930, for example, Hughes argued over 50 times before the U.S. Supreme Court. From 1926 to 1930, Hughes also served as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and as a judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague, Netherlands from 1928 to 1930. He was additionally a delegate to the Pan American Conference on Arbitration and Conciliation from 1928 to 1930. He was one of the co-founders in 1927 of the National Conference on Christians and Jews, now known as the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ), along with S. Parkes Cadman and others, to oppose the Ku Klux Klan, anti-Catholicism, and anti-Semitism in the 1920s and 1930s.[17]
In 1925–1926, Charles Evans Hughes represented the API (American Petroleum Institute) before the FOCB (Federal Oil Conservation Board).[18] It will be remembered that Hughes had fifteen years earlier had been one of the Supreme Court Justices during the anti-trust suit against Rockefeller”s Standard Oil.
In 1928 conservative business interests tried to interest Hughes in the GOP presidential nomination of 1928 instead of Herbert Hoover. Hughes, citing his age, turned down the offer.
Chief Justice
Portrait of Hughes as Chief Justice.
Herbert Hoover, who had appointed Hughes”s son as Solicitor General in 1929, appointed Hughes Chief Justice of the United States on February 3, 1930. Hughes was confirmed by the United States Senate on February 13, 1930, and received commission the same day, serving in this capacity until 1941. Hughes replaced former President William Howard Taft, a fellow Republican who had also lost a presidential election to Woodrow Wilson (in 1912) and who, in 1910, had appointed Hughes to his first tenure on the Supreme Court.
Hughes” appointment was opposed by progressive elements in both parties who felt that he was too friendly to big business. Idaho Republican William E. Borah said on the United States Senate floor that confirming Hughes would constitute “placing upon the Court as Chief Justice one whose views are known upon these vital and important questions and whose views, in my opinion, however sincerely entertained, are not which ought to be incorporated in and made a permanent part of our legal and economic system.”[19] Nonetheless Hughes was confirmed as Chief Justice with a vote of 52 to 26.
Hughes as Chief Justice swore in President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, 1937 and 1941.
Upon his return to the court, more progressives had joined the bench and Hughes seemed determined to once again vote progressive and soon bring an end the longstanding pro-business Lochner era.[2] During his early years as Chief Justice, however, the fear he had developed for an overblown bureaucracy during World War I undermined his optimism.[2] Showing his old progressive image, he upheld legislation protecting civil rights and civil liberties[2] and wrote the opinion for the Court in Near v. Minnesota 283 U.S. 697 (1931), which held prior restraint against the press is unconstitutional. Concerning economic regulation, however, he was still willing to uphold legislation which supported “freedom of opportunity” for individuals on the one hand and the “police power” of the state on the other[2] but did not personally favor legislation that linked national economic planning and bureaucratic social welfare together.[2] At first resisting Roosevelt”s New Deal and building a consensus of centrist members of the court, Hughes used his influence to limit the liberal scope of Roosevelt”s changes[2] and would often strike down New Deal legislation he felt was poorly drafted and did not clearly specify how they were constitutional.[20] By 1935, however, Hughes felt the court”s four conservative Justices had disregarded common law and sought to curb their power.[2]
Hughes was often aligned with the court”s three liberal Justices Louis Brandeis, Harlan Fiske Stone, and Benjamin Cardozo in finding some New Deal measures Constitutional,[2] On one occasion, Hughes would side with the conservatives in striking down the New Deal”s Agricultural Adjustment Act in the 1936 case United States v. Butler,[2] which held that the law was unconstitutional because its so-called tax policy was a coercive regulation rather than a tax measure and the federal government lacked authority to regulate agriculture,[2] but surprisingly did not assign the majority opinion,[2] a practice usually required for court”s most senior justice who agrees with the majority opinion,[21][22] and allowed Associate Justice Owen Roberts to speak for entire majority in his own words.[2] It was accepted that he did not agree with the argument that the federal government lacked authority over agriculture and was going to write a separate opinion upholding the act”s regulation policy while striking down the act”s taxation policy on the grounds that it was a coercive regulation rather than a tax measure.[2] However, Roberts convinced Hughes that he would side with him and the three liberal justices in future cases pertaining to the nation”s agriculture which involved the Constitution”s General Welfare Clause if he agreed to join his opinion.[2]
By 1936, Hughes sensed the growing hostility in the court and could do little about it.[2] In the 1936 case Carter v. Carter Coal Company, Hughes took a middle ground for both doctrinal and court-management reasons.[2] Writing his own opinion, he joined the three liberal justices in upholding the Bituminous Coal Conservation Act”s marketing provision but sided with Roberts and the four conservatives in striking down the act”s provision which regulated local labor.[2] By 1937, as the court leaned more in his favor, Hughes would renounce the position he took in the Carter case regarding local labor and ruled that the procedural methods which governed the Wagner Act”s labor regulation provisions bore resemblance to the procedural methods which governed the railroad rates that the Interstate Commerce Commission was allowed to maintain in the 1914 Shreveport decision and thus demonstrated that Congress could use its commerce power to regulate local industrial labor as well.[2]
In 1937, when Roosevelt attempted to pack the Court with six additional justices, Hughes worked behind the scenes to defeat the effort,[23][23] which failed in the Senate.[23] by rushing important New Deal legislation- such as Wagner Act and the Social Security Act- through the court and ensuring that the court”s majority would uphold their constitutionality.[2] The month after Roosevelt”s court-packing announcement, Roberts, who had joined the four conservative Justices in successfully striking down important New Deal legislation, shocked the American public by siding with Hughes and the court”s three liberal justices in striking down the court”s previous ruling in the 1923 Adkins v. Children”s Hospital case-which held that laws requiring minimum wage violated the Fifth Amendment”s due process clause- and upholding the constitutionality of Washington state”s minimum wage law in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish. Because Roberts had previously sided with the four conservative justices and used the Adkins decision as the basis for striking down a similar minimum wage law the state of New York enforced in Morehead v. New York ex rel. Tipaldo[24] it was widely perceived that he only agreed to uphold the constitutionality of minimum wage as a result of the pressure that was put on the Supreme Court by the court-packing plan.[25] However, both Hughes and Roberts acknowledged that the Chief Justice, in fact, had already convinced Roberts to change his method of voting months before Roosevelt announced his court-packing plan[26][27] and that the effort he put into defeating the plan played only a small significance in determining how the court”s majority made their decisions in future cases pertaining to New Deal legislation.[27]
Following the overwhelming support that had been shown for the New Deal through Roosevelt”s overwhelming re-election in November 1936,[26] Hughes was able to persuade Roberts to no longer base his votes on political maneuvering and side with him in future cases regarding New Deal related policies.[26][27] Roberts had voted to grant certiorari to hear the Parrish case before the election of 1936.[28] Oral arguments occurred on December 16 and 17, 1936, with counsel for Parrish specifically asking the court to reconsider its decision in Adkins v. Children”s Hospital,[29] which had been the basis for striking down a New York minimum wage law in Morehead v. New York ex rel. Tipaldo[24] in the late spring of 1936.[30]
Roberts indicated his desire to overturn Adkins immediately after oral arguments ended for the Parrish case on Dec. 17, 1936.[30] The initial conference vote on Dec. 19, 1936 was split 4-4; with this even division on the Court, the holding of the Washington Supreme Court, finding the minimum wage statute constitutional, would stand.[31] The eight voting justices anticipated Justice Stone—absent due to illness—would be the fifth vote necessary for a majority opinion affirming the constitutionality of the minimum wage law.[31] As Hughes desired a clear and strong 5-4 affirmation of the Washington Supreme Court”s judgment, rather than a 4-4 default affirmation, he convinced the other justices to wait until Stone”s return before both deciding and announcing the case.[31] In one of his notes from 1936, Hughes wrote that Roosevelt”s re-election forced the court to depart from its “fortress in public opinion” and severely weakened its capability to base its rulings on either personal or political beliefs.[26]
President Roosevelt announced his court reform bill on February 5, 1937, the day of the first conference vote after Stone”s February 1, 1937 return to the bench. Roosevelt later made his justifications for the bill to the public on March 9, 1937 during his 9th Fireside Chat. The Court”s opinion in Parrish was not published until March 29, 1937, after Roosevelt”s radio address. Hughes wrote in his autobiographical notes that Roosevelt”s court reform proposal “had not the slightest effect on our [the court”s] decision,”[25] but due to the delayed announcement of its decision the Court was characterized as retreating under fire.[25]
Although Hughes wrote the opinion invalidating the National Recovery Administration in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States- though the decision was also a unanimous one upheld by all of the court”s nine Justices-,[2] he also wrote the opinions for the Court in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp.,[32] NLRB v. Friedman-Harry Marks Clothing Co.,[33] and West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish[34] which approved some New Deal measures. Hughes supervised the move of the Court from its former quarters at the U.S. Capitol to the newly constructed Supreme Court building.
Hughes wrote twice as many constitutional opinions as any of his court”s other members.
Main Source of this part: Wikipedia
See Also
Washington Conference
Further reading
- The Recall of Justice Hughes (May, 1916) The World”s Work.
- Ross, William G. (2007). The Chief Justiceship of Charles Evans Hughes, 1930-1941. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
- Wittes, Benjamin (2006). Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times. Rowman & Littlefield.
- Glad, Betty, Charles Evans Hughes and the illusions of innocence: A study in American diplomacy (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1966).
- Perkins, Dexter, Charles Evans Hughes and American democratic statesmanship (Boston: Little, Brown, 1956).
- Pusey, Merlo J., Charles Evans Hughes, 2 vol. (New York: Macmillan, 1951).. the standard scholarly biography.
- Wesser, Robert F., Charles Evans Hughes: Politics and reform in New York, 1905–1910 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967).
Hughes, Charles Evans (1862_1948)
United States Constitution
According to theEncyclopedia of the American Constitution, about its article titled HUGHES, CHARLES EVANS (1862_1948) The only child of a Baptist minister and a strong-willed, doting mother who hoped their son would become a man of the cloth, Charles Evans Hughes compiled a record of public service unparalleled for its diversity and achievement by any other member of the Supreme
(read more about Constitutional law entries here).
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