Hughes, Charles Evans

Hughes, Charles Evans (b. Glen Falls, N.Y., 11 Apr. 1862; d. Cape Cod, Mass., 27 Aug. 1948; interred Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, N.Y.), associate justice, 1910–1916, chief justice, 1930–1941. It was said of Charles Evans Hughes that no one ever slapped him on the back and called him Charlie. The stern, hardworking, religious Hughes was known for intelligence and integrity rather than conviviality.

Hughes's father, David Charles Hughes, emigrated to the United States from Wales and became a preacher. A Methodist, he converted to the Baptist church to marry a Baptist minister's daughter, Mary Connelly. The Dutch‐descended Connellys traced their American roots to before the Revolution. David and Mary Hughes shared a devotion to their religion, and to their prized only child, Charles. Educated mostly at home by his adoring parents, Charles was a precocious child; he began reading when he was three years old, studied in several languages, and could recite from the classics by the time he was nine. Throughout his life, he was known for intelligence and a photographic memory. Attempts to enroll the adultlike child in various schools failed, as boredom or ill health returned him to home study. His parents were of modest means and passed on to Charles humility and respect for education, hard work, and religion.

Early Career

Hughes entered Madison University (now Colgate University) at age fourteen and later transferred to Brown. He went on to graduate first in his class at Columbia Law School and breezed through the New York bar examination with a record high score. He was admitted to practice in 1884, at the age of twenty‐two. He worked for the firm of Chamberlin, Carter, and Hornblower, where he had earlier served as an unpaid clerk. Walter S. Carter, the senior partner, had a knack for picking legal talent for the emerging elite corporate bar of New York. Hughes attained much‐needed financial rewards through his association with Carter. He also met and married the great love of his life, Carter's daughter Antoinette.

Hughes became a partner, but overwork and poor health soon drove him to a teaching position at Cornell Law School. He basked in the intellectual stimulation of teaching and in a happy home life with Antoinette and their two small children. Financial pressures and guilt‐inducing letters from his father‐in‐law ended the Cornell idyll. Hughes reentered practice and made a minor fortune and major reputation as a leader of the corporate bar.

Hughes became a nationally known figure in the muckraking, trustbusting age as a result of his role as the studious head of the New York “gas inquiry.” His independence, diligence, and capacity for sorting through the endless financial tangle of ratemaking and pricegouging won him a following in the press and the public. He next took on an investigation of corruption in the insurance industry. Hughes's reputation as an independent‐minded Republican led to his election as governor of New York in 1906. Although corporate interest comprised both his former clients and his campaign supporters, Hughes showed independence in his two terms as governor, supporting creation of a Public Service Commission with strong powers to regulate corporate activity.

Service as Associate Justice

President William Howard Taft's nomination of Hughes to the Supreme Court was uncontroversial. Hughes shared the bench with the formidable Oliver Wendell Holmes and developed an intellectual camaraderie with him, although they often disagreed. In Bailey v. Alabama, (1911), Hughes wrote the majority opinion declaring unconstitutional a state statute that, in effect, enforced peonage. Holmes dissented. This case represents the contrasting ideology of Hughes, the conservative reformer, and Holmes, the unsentimental defender of legislative prerogative. Hughes, although a conservative, was more likely to use the power of the bench to engage in moderate social reform. In Frank v. Mangum, (1915), Holmes and Hughes joined as dissenters, decrying the “lynch law” trial of a Jew accused of murdering a young southern woman, during a time of antisemitic mob violence. Neither Hughes nor Holmes would tolerate baldfaced lawlessness.

As an associate justice, Hughes sat on the Court during a period of emerging challenges to economic legislation. Hughes voted to uphold congressional powers to regulate commerce, and he dissented in Coppage v. Kansas (1915), which forbade the prolabor Kansas legislature from outlawing the “yellow dog” contract. Hughes, who started his public career as a reformer, was capable of rejecting employer arguments that protective labor legislation interfered with freedom of contract (see Due Process, Substantive; Labor).

Hughes' national reputation made him an obvious choice to run for president against the popular incumbent Woodrow Wilson. Hughes was nominated by the Republicans, and on 10 June 1916 he resigned from the Court to commence his unsuccessful campaign. After the close election, he promptly returned to a successful private practice and to active participation in the civic affairs of the period.

From 1921 to 1925, Hughes served as secretary of state under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. He pushed for U.S. participation in the League of Nations, advocated international reduction of arms, promoted the World Court, and supported various international efforts to fend off another world war. In 1925, suffering from overwork, Hughes resigned his cabinet post to resume private practice. He briefly served on the International Court of Justice before his 1930 appointment by President Herbert Hoover to serve as chief justice of the United States.

Service as Chief Justice

Hughes led the Court in what were perhaps its most significant days since the time of Chief Justice John Marshall. The Great Depression and the gradual economic recovery, along with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's effort to coerce the court into supporting his policies through the court‐packing plan, marked Hughes's tenure. Hughes also managed the court during the period when the great Justice Holmes was failing in health and when the strongminded liberal, Louis Brandeis shared the bench with stubborn, conservative old‐timers. Hughes was said to possess a diplomacy that limited acrimony and promoted efficiency in the beleagured Court.

Substantively, Hughes was a moderate, capable of activism when, in his view, the Constitution so compelled. Hughes supported civil liberties, generally voting in favor of free speech rights, as in Stromberg v. California (1931) and Herndon v. Lowry (1937).

Hughes also supported the rights of the accused in the infamous Scottsboro Boys cases, in which African‐American youths were sentenced to death on dubious rape charges (see Powell v. Alabama, 1932). Hughes looked realistically at the facts when racial discrimination was probable. A true believer in the sanctity of the legal process, he was outraged by the flagrantly racist practices common in the criminal justice system of his time. In cases such as Brown v. Mississippi (1936), in which authorities had obtained confessions by torturing African‐American defendants, Hughes responded with angry denunciation (see Race and Racism).

When the New Deal legislation hit the courts, Hughes again voted as an independent‐minded, moderate reformer. In Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935), he opposed the National Recovery Act as too broad an allocation of power, although at other times he had supported state and federal regulatory powers, as in Home Building and Loan Association v. Blaisdell (1934).

Roosevelt grew dismayed at the Court's repeated rejection of legislation designed to combat the depression. After his reelection in 1936 by a resounding landslide, Roosevelt proposed a bill—known as the court‐packing plan—to add judges to the Court. After the announcement of Roosevelt's plan, the Court handed down progovernment decisions in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937), with Hughes writing for the majority, and National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. (1937), which sustained the National Labor Relations Act.

In spite of his support for government economic regulation in the past, Hughes was now seen by some as capitulating to Roosevelt's threats. Hughes maintained that nothing in his legal analysis had changed. Roosevelt withdrew his controversial plan.

Hughes was determined to retire before his capacities faded, and he resigned on 1 July 1941. In his retirement years he enjoyed time with his family, and he organized records of his career for the benefit of historians. He died in 1948.

Bibliography

Samuel Hendel , Charles Evans Hughes and the Supreme Court (1951).
Merlo Pussey , Charles Evans Hughes, 2 vols. (1951).

Mari J. Matsuda