Hughes, Charles Evans 1862-1948

HUGHES, CHARLES EVANS 1862-1948

Lawyer, reformer, chief justice of thesupreme court

New York Lawyer

Charles Evans Hughes was the son of a minister from Glens Falls, New York. After graduating from Brown University he received a law degree from Columbia in 1884, and for the next twenty-two years practiced law in New York City, except for two years (1891—1893) spent as a law professor at Cornell University. Even when he practiced law, though, Hughes also taught, either the law or the Bible. To prepare themselves for the bar exam many young New York City law school graduates attended the evening drill sessions Hughes conducted at Columbia; and at both Cornell and the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church he offered a Sunday class on the Old Testament prophets. (When Hughes's workload overwhelmed him he turned the class over to John D. Rockefeller Jr.) As president of the Baptist Social Union he scandalized some New York City Baptists by inviting Booker T. Washington to speak at a dinner and then seating Washington and his wife at the head table. Aside from small events like this one, Hughes worked successfully behind the scenes, establishing a reputation among lawyers, but not among the general public, for dedication and hard work. When his wife asked why she saw all of his associates, but not Hughes, written about in the newspapers, he responded, "My dear, you must know that I have a positive genius for privacy."

Gas Investigation

This privacy would end in 1905. That spring the state legislature launched an investigation of the companies delivering natural gas to New York City. The legislature was trying to set fair rates for the companies to charge and needed a lawyer able to master the intricacies of both the gas business and the regulatory process. Though at first Hughes declined, he ultimately accepted the assignment. In June 1905, after a few months of intense investigation, he wrote a report that recommended establishing a public service commission to regulate the gas business. He declined an offer to serve as the commission's chairman, sailing instead for Europe to join his family on their annual holiday.

Insurance Investigation

Back in New York City another investigation was about to begin. The New York World was charging that insurance companies like the Equitable Life Assurance Society were speculating with policy funds—"gambling with the people's money"—for their own gain. State regulators, the World charged, had not only failed to regulate the industry but in fact had been paid off by the insurance companies. The Republicans in the legislature were sensitive about this, since the regulators were also Republicans. They would have to investigate both the regulators and the insurance companies and needed a counsel who was not connected to the Republican leadership, who could understand the complexities of the insurance industry, and whom the people would trust. In Europe, Hughes received a cable that the legislature needed him. He returned home to serve as counsel to an investigation that would last from September to December 1905. "The time for rumors and the sensational reporting of conjectures had passed," Hughes wrote, "and now evidence must be produced and the actual situation fully ascertained in a responsible manner."

Hughes Examines the Witnesses

Each day the committee held hearings and Hughes questioned the witnesses. Compared by observers to "a teacher finding a mild enthusiasm in leading a child to concede the irrefutable verities of mathematics," Hughes patiently and thoroughly questioned some of the nation's leading business figures. The revelations were shocking, and often as much a shock to Hughes as to the committee and the public. The insurance companies had misused their funds, paid off political allies, lobbied against "undesirable" legislation, and used large sums of money to influence the political process. Hughes, a hardworking man with a deep respect for the law and for public morality, found all these practices deeply disturbing. However, he did not harass the witnesses, but simply asked penetrating questions that exposed a lurid tale. Newspaper readers who had read the sensational allegations of muckrakers in the World now had the stones confirmed by the sober Hughes.

Insurance Influence

Hughes exposed a pattern of corruption involving the insurance companies as well as business and political leaders. When he asked financier E. H. Harriman if he did not have undue influence through his connection with Gov. Benjamin Odell, Harriman objected: it was the governor's connection with me, Harriman said, that gave him influence. One morning Hughes questioned insurance executive George Perkins about a $48,000 payment given out by New York Life. No one could explain where the money had gone. Over lunch Perkins warned Hughes to think carefully before he prodded him further: the money had gone to Theodore Roosevelt's 1904 election campaign. Hughes would want to consider carefully, Perkins said, if that information should be made public knowledge. "After lunch," Hughes responded, "I'm going to ask you what was done with that $48,000, and I expect a candid answer."

The Republicans and the Investigation

The investigation was most damaging to New York's Republicans. In October the party leaders tried a bold move to get Hughes off the panel and to prevent a seemingly inevitable defeat at the polls. New York City's Republican Party nominated Hughes for mayor. He declined, and the Republicans lost. But the party leaders knew their regular candidates were too tarnished by corruption to win the next year's governor's race and kept Hughes in mind, though President Roosevelt joked that the Republicans had been so damaged by Hughes's investigation that at the next state convention he would receive only two votes: President Roosevelt's and his secretary's. Hughes continued his investigation, denying any desire to seek office, and even declined a nomination for a federal judgeship (he said he could not afford the small salary it paid). At the conclusion of the investigation Hughes drafted a report calling for reforms to prevent the kinds of abuses he had uncovered: insurance companies could not make political contributions; companies had to pay dividends every year; companies had to adopt a standard policy form; and all annual reports had to be made public. In 1906 the New York Republicans nominated Hughes for governor. Hughes was the only Republican to win statewide office in New York, defeating publisher William Randolph Hearst.

Reform Governor

As governor for three years, Hughes initiated several reforms in New York State. Though he now had to work with an often stubborn Democratic legislature, he wielded his executive power against corruption. After investigating corruption in Manhattan and the Bronx, he removed the presidents of those boroughs, and he appointed new personnel to existing state commissions. He successfully campaigned to strengthen the Public Service Commission, giving it broader regulatory powers. The utilities and other businesses subject to regulation opposed this, often arguing that it should be up to the courts, not an unelected commission, to set rates and determine business practices. Hughes disagreed. At one public meeting a lawyer, who had formerly represented many of the utilities, rose to criticize Hughes's reform moves but explained that he spoke as a private citizen and not as the representative of any particular interest. Hughes responded that he did represent a particular interest: the public.

Hughes and the Courts

As governor of New York during this campaign to strengthen the state public service commission, Hughes made his most-remembered statement: "We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is." This statement is among the most misconstrued in American history. Hughes did not mean that the judges can determine, based on their own understanding, what the Constitution means. Instead, he was debating the broader issue of regulation. "Let us keep the courts for the questions they were intended to consider," he said, and give power to regulate corporations and set utility rates to administrators directly accountable to the public. "I have the highest regard for the courts.… I reckon him one of the worst enemies of the community who will talk lightly of the dignity of the bench. We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our liberty and of our property under the Constitution. I do not want to see any indirect assaults upon the courts." Hughes did not want to see judges burdened with "questions of administration" that they were not prepared to answer. This is similar to the argument Herbert Croly would make in his influential 1909 book, The Promise of American Life, that administrators and experts, above "the realm of partisan and factious political controversy," would come to occupy the position of respect and independent authority "traditionally … granted to a common law judge." So Hughes's statement, instead of a glib call for judge-made law, was a defense of judicial independence. This statement acquired great importance in 1910, when Hughes became a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Resigning from the Court in 1916 to run for, and nearly win, the presidency, Hughes returned to the Court as chief justice in 1930, serving for twelve years. He died on 27 August 1948.

Sources:

Samuel Hendel, Charles Evans Hughes and the Supreme Court (New York: King's Crown, 1951);

Charles Evans Hughes, The Autobiographical Notes of Charles Evans Hughes, edited by David J. Danelski and Joseph S. Tulchin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973).