Hughes, Charles Evans 1862-1948

HUGHES, CHARLES EVANS 1862-1948

Chief justice of the supreme court, 1930-1941

Judicial Statesman,

Charles Evans Hughes assumed the responsibilities of the Supreme Court chief justice at the onset of this nation's worst economic crisis. Little did anyone suspect at the time of his appointment that his varied and extensive experience would become so critical a factor in steering the institution of the Supreme Court through one of its most challenging periods. If anything, the public perception of the chief justice was one that evoked an image of an austere, remote, and humorless man who had once pursued the presidency on a platform remembered for its probusiness and antilabor positions. His name remains linked with the public perception of the early New Deal Court as having been blindly conservative and much out of step with the nation's Depression-era needs and priorities. However conservative Hughes's economic views may have been, he, above all others, was responsible for successfully guiding the Court through one of its most difficult crises. Less well understood is his role as a protector of civil liberties.

Lawyer and Politician

Reared as an only child in a family that placed considerable value upon purposeful action and the performance of one's duty, Hughes was something of a prodigy in his youth. His extraordinary memory and drive led him first to Brown University, then to the Columbia School of Law, where his passion for precise thought and thoroughness in preparation brought him the highest honors. In 1884 he joined a New York law firm, becoming a full-fledged partner only three years later. Thereafter, and in short order, he taught law at the Cornell Law School and served as counsel for a legislative committee investigating the illegal practices of the utilities industry in New York City. His success in this role and as the principal legal counsel for yet another legislative committee investigating the life insurance industry catapulted him into the public eye as a Republican reform candidate for the state's gubernatorial office. In 1910 President William Howard Taft, the man he would succeed in 1930 as chief justice, nominated Hughes to become an associate justice of the Supreme Court, a position he would retain until 1916 when he ran for the presidency against Woodrow Wilson. Having lost the election, he returned to private practice, where he specialized in corporate law. In 1921 he became President Harding's secretary of state, a post he held until 1925, when he was appointed to The Hague Tribunal; later, in 1928, he was made a judge on the Permanent Court of International Justice.

The Chief Justice

When Hughes replaced the ailing Taft as chief justice, he was described as possessing a "judicial tendency" toward a conservative philosophy a little "less cheerful than Mr. Taft's." What was overlooked in this assessment was the chief justice's earlier record as a progressive who had twice urged the New York legislature to consider public regulation of business and, as governor, had established regulatory commissions equipped with both investigatory and rate-fixing powers. Aligned against the four conservative justices on the Court were three who fit squarely in the liberal camp. Only Justice Owen Roberts and the chief justice were considered moderates, their voting tendencies too unpredictable for them to be so easily classified. Among the first pieces of Depression-generated legislation to reach the Court in 1934 were two of special concern. The first (Home Building & Loan Assn. v. Blaisdelt) involved a moratorium upon the foreclosure of mortgages in Minnesota, and the second a question concerning the extent to which the state of New York could establish price controls over milk (Nebbia v. New York). Both laws were upheld, an indication of the chief justice's willingness to grant government, within limits, the authority it required to meet the pressing needs of a Depression-racked constituency. The justice's concerns regarding the constitutional implications of the centralization of government power would not fully surface until later.

The "Sick Chicken" Case

In 1935 the Court found itself at the center of controversy involving the New Deal's ambitious legislative program. In January the Court invalidated, as an improper delegation of congressional authority, a portion of the National Industrial Recovery Act affecting the regulation of the oil industry. A few months later, Justice Roberts joined the conservatives in a five to four decision invalidating the Railroad Retirement Act, the chief justice having aligned himself with the Court's liberals. Clearly Justice Roberts had become the swing vote, more often than not aligning himself with the more conservative members of the Court against the chief justice and Associate Justices Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, and Harlan Stone. On 27 May the remainder of the National Industrial Recovery Act was declared unconstitutional in a decision that would temporarily cast a cloud over all other New Deal legislation. That case involved the administration's use of the constitution's commerce clause to extend its regulatory powers, in this case, over the operation of a poultry packer and distributor.

The Crisis

Not quite two years later, in response to the Court's invalidations of other portions of his program, President Roosevelt introduced a plan to increase the number of justices on the Court. The explanation he offered involved his concerns respecting the ages of the justices and the burdens of their respective offices. Chief Justice Hughes, however, proved to be a shrewd, if somewhat restrained, opponent of the proposal. At Sen. Burton K. Wheeler's suggestion, the chief justice composed and released a letter that refuted many of the reasons the president had offered in support of his plan. In an unprecedented step, Hughes, in the company of two other justices, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain the Court's position and to emphasize the constitutional significance of its independence. The presence of additional members of the Court, he insisted, would only create delay and foster impression that the Court would be ever thereafter subject to the ebb and flow of politics. Gradually, public and congressional opinion shifted against the president's plan, and, as the Court's cause was taken up by members of the president's own party, it became evident that the proposal would meet with defeat. Two weeks later Justice Roberts joined the chief justice and the more liberal wing of the Court in issuing two opinions, one upholding a minimum-wage law similar to another it had previously rejected only a few years before, and the other in which the Wagner Act was found to be constitutional. Hughes denied that the Court had been pushed to reverse itself: Justice Roberts had acted independently in reconsidering his earlier position, and the chief justice himself, it was noted, had remained consistent with the reasoning of an opinion he had written in connection with a similar case where he had approved of the government's use of its power to control commercial activity, even where it was only loosely associated with interstate commerce. The president's effort to influence the Court's deliberations by expanding its membership had been effectively neutralized.

The Chief Justice's Remaining Terms

In the years remaining, Hughes proved instrumental in the Court's transformation from its role as the protector of property rights to defender of personal liberties. An outspoken critic in the post-World War I hysteria, which had encouraged official action against radical political groups, the chief justice was actively involved in defining those liberties in the context of one's right to free speech and assembly and to be free, under the Fourteenth Amendment, from state interference in the free exercise of the rights specifically protected by the federal constitution. Hughes had long maintained an interest in such issues, having written the Court's majority opinions in Aldridge v. U. S. (jury panelists can be questioned regarding their racial attitudes), Stromberg v. California (a free-speech issue involving the display of a red flag as a symbol of opposition to the government, a violation of state law), Near v. Minnesota (the illegal use of an injunction to suppress critical articles in a newspaper), and Dejonge v. Oregon (overturning the conviction of a communist organizer as a violation of the defendant's right of assembly). He would, as chief justice, preside over the Court during its change in direction away from principally economic issues toward three decades of involvement in the individual rights of the nation's citizenry.

Sources:

Alpheus Thomas Mason, The Supreme Court from Taft to Burger (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979);

Richard L. Pacelle Jr., The Transformation of the Supreme Court's Agenda (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991);

Newsweek (13 June 1938): 26;

Time (10 February 1930): 11.