Clarke, John Hessin

Clarke, John Hessin (b. New Lisbon, Oh., 18 Sep. 1857; d. San Diego, Ca., 22 Mar. 1945; interred Lisbon Cemetery, Lisbon, Oh.), associate justice, 1916–1922. John Hessin Clarke was the only son of John and Melissa Hessin Clarke, both Irish Protestants. After attending local schools and graduating from Western Reserve College in 1877, Clarke studied law with his father, passed the Ohio bar examinations with honors, and began to practice law in his hometown in 1878. Clarke soon moved to Youngstown, where he gained renown as a trial lawyer and as part owner of the Youngstown Vindicator. He never married. He moved to Cleveland in 1897 and became counsel to railroads and other corporate clients. Clarke joined the reformers around Cleveland Mayor Tom L. Johnson but clashed with Johnson about taxes on railroad property and other reforms affecting his clients.

By 1903, Clarke had become a mainstream Democratic progressive and twice unsuccessfully sought a U.S. Senate seat from Ohio. He advocated direct election of senators, home rule for cities, municipal ownership of railways, and disclosure of campaign expenditures. In 1914, Clarke received the endorsement of reform Democrats for a third Senate campaign but instead accepted Woodrow Wilson's appointment as a federal district judge in the Northern District of Ohio. Clarke's friend Newton D. Baker in July 1916 helped convince Wilson to appoint Clarke to the Court when Charles Evans Hughes resigned to run for president.

Former president William Howard Taft joined conservative newspapers in attacking the appointments of Louis D. Brandeis and Clarke in 1916, claiming the pair represented a new school of constitutional construction that threatened the nation's legal fabric. When Taft joined Brandeis and Clarke as chief justice in 1921, however, their relationships were quite cordial. Yet James McReynolds, whose animosity toward Brandeis is well known, was so nasty to Clarke that his attitude helped prompt Clarke's resignation. McReynolds refused to sign the official letter expressing regret at Clarke's departure.

During his time on the Court, Clarke voted consistently as a Wilson Progressive and usually sided with Brandeis. Yet Clarke went further than Brandeis in supporting legislative power. Clarke wrote the majority opinion in Abrams v. United States (1919), upholding the conviction and lengthy prison sentences of six agitators under the Espionage Act of 1918. His dissents in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918) and Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co. (1922) affirmed respectively that congressional power was broad enough to reach child labor through either the Commerce Clause or the taxing power. Clarke's respect for legislative enactments extended to the states' police power and to vigorous federal antitrust enforcement.

Clarke is remembered primarily for his resignation from the Court. (See Resignation and Retirement.) He had served for five terms and was in good physical health at the age of sixty‐five when he announced in 1922 that he had decided to devote himself to seeking America's entry into the League of Nations. As with Arthur Goldberg's decision to resign in 1965, Clarke found that his quest for world peace only led to his own relative obscurity. By 1927, Clarke realized that the United States would not enter the League of Nations, and he retired from public life, although he reemerged briefly to back Franklin D. Roosevelt's court‐packing scheme in 1937.

Bibliography

David M. Levitan , The Jurisprudence of Mr. Justice Clarke, Miami Law Quarterly 7 (December 1952): 44–72.

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