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).

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.

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

HUGHES, CHARLES EVANS

The long public career of Charles Evans Hughes prepared him to be a powerful chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Hughes was a legal and political dynamo. Beginning as a lawyer and law professor in New York in the 1880s, he became known nationally for his role in investigating power utilities and the insurance industry. He went on to a career in national and international affairs—first as a two-term governor of New York, second as a Republican nominee for president, and third as secretary of state. He was twice appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, serving as an associate justice from 1910 to 1916 and as chief justice from 1930 to 1941. His intellectual vigor and strong hand guided the Court

through the critical period of the new deal era when it made significant changes in its views on the constitutional limits on government power.

Hughes was born April 11, 1862, in Glen Falls, New York. Educated at Columbia University Law School, he spent his twenties and thirties in private practice and teaching law at Columbia and Cornell Universities. His expertise was in commercial law and by the time he was in his forties he had built a considerable reputation in that area. The New York state legislature chose him in 1905 to lead public investigations of the gas and electrical utilities in

New York City and to probe the state's insurance industry. His work not only resulted in ground-breaking regulatory plans, later highly influential across the United States, but also catapulted Hughes into a political career. He immediately ran for governor of New York and twice won election to that office as a politician known for independence of mind and commitment to administrative reform. In 1910, his second term as governor had not yet expired when he stepped down and accepted President William Howard Taft's appointment to the Supreme Court.

This move characterized the lifelong tension between Hughes's attractions to the legal and political spheres. He left public office to join the Court; later he would leave the Court to run for office again, then return to the Court as chief justice. In his nearly seven years on the Court as an associate justice, he displayed a flexibility of thought that led him to side at times with liberals and at times with the conservative majority. His most significant opinions turned on the issue of federal power. In particular, these opinions weighed the extent to which the commerce clause of the Constitution gave the federal government authority to regulate the national economy. The opinions were delivered in the Minnesota and Shreveport Rate cases, in which the Court's decisions laid the groundwork for the expansion of federal regulation in the years to come (Simpson v. Shepard, 230 U.S. 352, 33 S. Ct. 729, 57 L. Ed. 1511 [1913]; Houston, East & West Texas Railway Co. v. United States, 234 U.S. 342, 34 S. Ct. 833, 58 L. Ed. 1341 [1914]).

The middle years of Hughes's career saw tumultuous change. In 1916, he stepped down from the Court to return to politics. Although he had not actively sought the Republican Party's nomination for president, the party drafted him, and he reluctantly agreed to run against woodrow wilson. Despite a hard-fought campaign, Hughes lost the close election and returned to private practice. His respite from public service was brief. In 1921, President warren g. harding appointed Hughes secretary of state, a difficult position because of the challenges facing the United States in the aftermath of world war i: the war debt, reparations, the newly established Soviet Union, and especially relations with East Asia. Naval disarmament ranked high among Hughes's concerns. In 1921 and 1922, he organized the Washington Conference, which for nearly a decade curbed naval growth and brought stability to the western Pacific.

The final chapter in Hughes's career returned him to the Supreme Court. Hughes served as secretary of state to Harding's successor, calvin coolidge, then resigned in 1925 to work in private practice. Between that and his next stint on the Court, he published a book-length work entitled The Supreme Court of the United States: Its Foundation, Methods, and Achievements: An Interpretation (1928, reprinted 2000). In 1930, President herbert hoover nominated him for chief justice. Bitter opponents voiced criticism of Hughes's political career and his resignation but failed to block his appointment in a confirmation vote of 52–26. At age 68, Hughes became the oldest man ever to be chosen chief justice.

The Hughes Court sat during a controversial period in U.S. legal history. The Depression years had brought misery and a radical federal response. President franklin d. roosevelt's economic recovery plans, known collectively as the New Deal, met opposition in Congress and from the justices of the Court. Several pieces of New Deal legislation faced constitutional tests and failed. After unanimously holding unconstitutional the national industrial recovery act (48 Stat. 195 [1933]) in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495, 55 S. Ct. 837, 79 L. Ed. 1570 (1935), the Court provoked a battle with the frustrated president. Roosevelt proposed an increase to the number of seats on the Court, hoping to then pack the Court with justices favorable to his views. Hughes wrote to the senate judiciary committee in a move to help thwart Roosevelt's plan.

"When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free."
—Charles Evans Hughes

By taking a largely dim view of both federal and state regulatory power, the Hughes Court differed little from its conservative predecessors. In 1937, this changed dramatically. In upholding the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq., Hughes wrote a landmark opinion that greatly strengthened the labor movement (nlrb v. jones & laughlin steel corp., 301 U.S. 1, 57 S. Ct. 615, 81 L. Ed. 893 [1937]). Also that year the Court upheld a state minimum wage law, in west coast hotel v. parrish, 300 U.S. 379, 57 S. Ct. 578, 81 L. Ed. 703. The Parrish decision was a striking departure from rulings of previous decades. Only 15 years earlier, for example, the Court had refused to force employers of adult women to pay a minimum wage, viewing such a requirement as an unconstitutional infringement of the liberty of contract. The 1937 decisions together have been called a constitutional revolution because they marked a great change in jurisprudence that liberalized the Court's view of government power.

When Hughes retired at last in 1941, at age 80, he had made a powerful impression on the law and on the Court. During his tenure as chief justice, he had shown the same flexibility of mind that marked his period as an associate justice: siding alternately with liberal and conservative colleagues, he often cast the swing vote. He had clearly run the Court with a strong hand, not only in leading the discussion but frequently in persuading justices to vote with him. Justice felix frankfurter, who served under Hughes, likened him to the conductor of an orchestra: "He took his seat at the center of the Court with a mastery, I suspect, unparalleled in the history of the Court."

Hughes died August 27, 1948, in Osterville, Massachusetts. Succeeding generations have compared his bold leadership to that of Chief Justice earl warren, who headed the Court two decades later.

further readings

Hall, Timothy L. 2001. Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Facts on File.

Perkins, Dexter. 1978. Charles Evans Hughes and American Democratic Statesmanship. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood.

Schwartz, Bernard. 1995. "Supreme Court Superstars: The Ten Greatest Justices." Tulsa Law Journal 31 (fall).

cross-references

Labor Law; Labor Union; Supreme Court of the United States.

Charles Evans Hughes

The American jurist and statesman Charles Evans Hughes (1862-1948) served as secretary of state in two administrations and was a chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Charles Evans Hughes was born at Glens Falls, N.Y., on April 14, 1862, the son of a minister. Precocious and gifted with a phenomenal memory, Hughes entered Madison University at the age of 14, transferring later to Brown University. He graduated from Cornell Law School in 1884. For the next 20 years he practiced law, briefly interrupting his work to teach law at Cornell.

At the age of 43 Hughes was chosen by a legislative committee to investigate the gas and electric industry in New York. His brilliant success in exposing extortionate rates led to his appointment as investigator of the insurance scandals in New York. In 1906 he was nominated as the Republican gubernatorial candidate. He won in a bitter campaign against William Randolph Hearst.

Hughes was a vigorous governor. He won a battle for the regulation of public utilities, strove to stamp out racetrack gambling, and was interested in conservation and in an employment compensation law. He was an exacting administrator, demanding high standards.

After a second term as governor, Hughes was appointed an associate justice of the Supreme Court by President William Howard Taft. He distinguished himself by supporting national railroad rate regulation and wrote one of the most important decisions in this field. In 1916 Hughes resigned from the Court to accept the Republican presidential nomination. He was beaten by a narrow margin in the ensuing campaign against Woodrow Wilson. In 1920 Hughes advocated ratification of the League of Nations treaty with reservations and urged the election of Warren Harding to implement acceptance. However, once appointed Harding's secretary of state, he made no effort to secure American adherence to the League Covenant.

Hughes was a brilliant secretary of state. He began by calling the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armaments, at which he electrified the delegates by proposing a specific schedule for reducing the battleship force of the great naval powers. After some jockeying, a treaty was signed. In a significant concession to Japan, the United States agreed not to increase its fortifications in the Far Pacific. Hughes also brought about a partial settlement of the vexing question of German World War I reparations, gave a more precise definition to the Monroe Doctrine, and improved the quality of the U.S. Foreign service.

After 1925 Hughes for the most part practiced law until, in 1930, he was nominated by President Herbert Hoover as chief justice of the United States. Hughes presided over a Court badly divided and hostile to the New Deal of incoming president Franklin D. Roosevelt. He joined in the Court's decision to set aside the National Recovery Act of 1934 and in the ruling against the Agricultural Recovery Act of 1935. When President Roosevelt advanced his famous Court-packing plan in 1937, Hughes carefully pulverized the President's argument that the Court was behind in its work. This sparring ended when Hughes joined four other justices in sustaining the Wagner Labor Relations Act, an important piece of New Deal legislation. Hughes always maintained that he acted on the basis of the law, not political considerations.

Hughes took an advanced stand on civil rights, especially in cases involving African American rights, and he was a firm advocate of freedom of the press. He resigned from the Court in 1941 and died on Aug. 27, 1948.

Further Reading

The authorized biography of Hughes is Merlo J. Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes (2 vols., 1951). A briefer study is Dexter Perkins, Charles Evans Hughes and American Democratic Statesmanship (1956). A study of the Progressive movement in New York State, with the focus upon Hughes's years as governor, is Robert F. Wesser, Charles Evans Hughes: Politics and Reform in New York, 1905-1910 (1967).

Additional Sources

Perkins, Dexter, Charles Evans Hughes and American democratic statesmanship, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978.

Pusey, Merlo John, Charles Evans Hughes, New York: Garland Pub., 1979. □

Charles Evans Hughes , 1862-1948, American statesman and jurist, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1910-16), U.S. Secretary of State (1921-25), and eleventh Chief Justice of the United States (1930-41), b. Glens Falls, N.Y.

Political and Diplomatic Career

A graduate of Columbia law school, he was admitted to the bar in 1884 and practiced law in New York City, where he advanced rapidly in his profession. He served (1905) as counsel for a committee of the New York state legislature investigating gas companies and, as counsel (1905-6) for another state investigating committee, achieved national prominence for his exposure of corrupt practices of insurance companies in New York. This led to his election (1906) as Republican governor of New York. In this post (1907-10), Hughes brought about the establishment of the public service commission, the passage of various insurance-law reforms, and the enactment of much labor legislation. He resigned the governorship after President Taft appointed him (1910) Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, but left the Court in 1916 to run for President on the Republican ticket.

The election was one of the closest presidential contests in American history, Woodrow Wilson defeating Hughes by an electoral vote of 277 to 254 and a popular vote of 9,129,606 to 8,538,221. The vote of California, which went to Wilson by less than 4,000 votes largely because of the disaffection of Hiram Johnson , decided the election. Hughes again devoted himself to his law practice. In 1921, President Warren Harding appointed him Secretary of State. He continued in this office under President Coolidge. Hughes prepared plans for the limitation of naval armaments at the Washington Conference (see naval conferences ), directed negotiations for several important foreign treaties, and vastly increased the prestige of the U.S. Dept. of State. He was a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (1926-30) and a judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice (1928-30).

Supreme Court Chief Justice

In 1930, Hughes was appointed Chief Justice of the United States by President Hoover; he retired in 1941. As Chief Justice, Hughes generally held a moderately conservative position, and was often a swing vote on a court divided between conservative and liberal factions. The Hughes court helped develop the modern notion of freedom of speech through such decisions as Near v. Minnesota (1931), which largely voided all laws permitting prior restraint of press publication. More often than not, he voted to uphold controversial legislation of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, though in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935), he wrote the opinion that found the act that created the National Recovery Administration to be unconstitutional. He vigorously opposed Roosevelt's unsuccessful effort to reorganize the Supreme Court in 1937.

Bibliography

Many of Hughes's addresses were published in The Pathway to Peace (1925), The Supreme Court of the United States (1928), Our Relations to the Nations of the Western Hemisphere (1928), Pan-American Peace Plans (1929), and Nations United for Peace (1945). See his autobiographical notes, ed. by D. J. Danelski and J. S. Tulchin (1973); biographies by B. Glad (1966) and R. F. Wesser (1967).

Hughes, Charles Evans (1862–1948), chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.Born in Glens Falls, New York, the son of a Welsh immigrant and Baptist preacher, Charles Evans Hughes received a Christian education mostly at home, attended Madison (later renamed Colgate) University, and graduated from Brown University. In 1884, Columbia University awarded him a law degree. During the next twenty years, he mainly practiced corporate law.

As counsel to a New York state legislative committee investigating the utility industry, his hard‐hitting attacks on corporate corruption won widespread acclaim. President Theodore Roosevelt engineered his nomination as a Republican for governor of New York in 1906. Serving two terms, he promoted the progressive goals of administrative efficiency and public service reform. In 1910, President William Howard Taft appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court. He resigned in 1916 after receiving the Republican party's nomination for president. He narrowly lost to incumbent Woodrow Wilson.

Hughes's support until 1918 for Wilson's foreign policy established him as a leading Republican proponent of internationalism. In 1921, he became President Warren Harding's secretary of state. Committed to the principles of antimilitarism and the rule of law, he proposed a series of agreements at the Washington Naval Arms Conference of 1921–1922, including the Five‐Power Naval Treaty that mandated capital‐ship ratios and reductions. The treaty may ironically have strengthened Japan in the Pacific, the opposite of what Hughes had intended. He also spearheaded U.S. efforts to stabilize the European economy by extending loans to Germany and scaling back Germany's World War I reparations payments. He supported the Dawes Plan of 1924, formulated by a commission headed by banker Charles G. Dawes (1865–1951), as a step toward this goal. Although he avoided diplomatic commitments in Europe, Hughes did initiate some informal cooperation with the League of Nations.

Returning to private law practice in 1925, Hughes soon accepted appointment to the Permanent Court of Arbitration and, in 1928, to the World Court. In 1930, President Herbert Hoover named him chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. A moderate conservative, Hughes in his written opinions reflected an unimaginative but deep commitment to constitutional procedures. Serving until 1941, he often, but not always, questioned the expansion of federal economic regulation. His religious principles, which contributed to his libertarian sentiments and his sympathy for racial equality, distanced him from the narrow partisanship of many New Deal opponents.
See also Federal Government, Executive Branch: Department of State; Foreign Relations; New Deal Era, The; Progressive Era.

Bibliography

Merlo J. Pusey , Charles Evans Hughes, 2 vols., 1951.
Betty Glad , Charles Evans Hughes and the Illusions of Innocence, 1966.
Robert F. Wesser , Charles Evans Hughes: Politics and Reform in New York, 1905–1910, 1967.
David J. Danelski and Joseph S. Tulchin, eds., The Autobiographical Notes of Charles Evans Hughes, 1973.

Gary B. Ostrower

Hughes, Charles Evans (b. 11 Apr. 1862, d. 27 Aug. 1948). Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court 1930–41 Born in Glenn Falls, New York State, Hughes studied for an LLB at Columbia in 1884, became a successful member of a New York City law firm, and in 1906 was elected state Governor. From 1910 until 1916 he served as a member of the federal Supreme Court, but resigned to run in 1916 as the Republican candidate for President. Defeated by Wilson, he became Secretary of State (1921–5) under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, when he supported US cooperation with the League of Nations, negotiated a separate peace treaty with Germany, and hosted the Washington Conference of 1921–2, which achieved some restrictions on naval expansion. His career was crowned by his years as Chief Justice, during which he enhanced the efficiency of the federal court system, and gave firm support to the freedom against state actions guaranteed to the citizen under the First Amendment. He was largely responsible for defeating a plan of President Roosevelt in 1937 to ‘pack’ the court by adding to it extra liberal justices to counter sitting members over 70 years of age who refused to retire. At the same time his court supported a number of New Deal proposals, such as the Social Security Act.

Hughes, Charles Evans (1862–1948) US statesman and jurist, associate justice of the Supreme Court (1910–16), secretary of state (1921–25), eleventh US chief justice (1930–41). He was the Republican presidential candidate (1916) but narrowly lost to Woodrow Wilson. He served as secretary of state under Presidents Harding and Coolidge and negotiated the naval disarmament treaties emanating from the Washington Conference. He was a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (1926–30) and judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice (1928–30). Appointed chief justice by President Hoover, he was a moderating influence. He retired in 1941.