SANFORD, EDWARD TERRY

An important influence on the development of civil liberties, Edward Terry Sanford served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1923 to 1930. Sanford was a native of Tennessee with a cosmopolitan education, and before serving on the Court, he had a private law practice, served in the justice department, and was a federal district judge in his home state for fourteen years. While on the Court, Sanford's views were largely moderate, and in his lifetime, he was overshadowed by his highly visible contemporaries. Nonetheless, Sanford's opinions on civil liberties helped advance the guarantees of the bill of rights: in two major opinions delivered in the 1920s, he laid the groundwork for modern Supreme Court decisions that restrict the power of states to limit first amendment rights to freedom of speech.

Sanford was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on July 23, 1865, the son of a lumber and construction millionaire. He earned four degrees from the University of Tennessee and Harvard, and studied languages in France and Germany. At Harvard Law School, he distinguished himself as the editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude. He began practicing law in Tennessee in the 1890s. He then lectured in law at the University of Tennessee from 1898 to 1906 before moving to Washington, D.C., for his first federal job.

Sanford's federal law career began in prosecution and rapidly took him to the federal bench. He joined the Justice Department in 1906 as a special assistant prosecutor, and a year later he was made an assistant attorney general. By 1908 Sanford returned to Tennessee as a federal district judge, a position he held until 1923. His specialties were bankruptcy and equity cases. On the bench he developed a reputation for open-mindedness, fairness, and leniency, at times reversing his own decisions. He was highly driven and nervously energetic, and would pace and chain-smoke in his chambers while considering his busy docket.

In 1923 Sanford's nomination to the Supreme Court came at the behest of his friends, Chief Justice william howard taft and Attorney General harry m. daugherty. The two men convinced President warren g. harding of Sanford's breadth of education and varied experience, which included service on the league of nations. The nomination succeeded easily in the Senate, and Sanford sat on

the Court for seven years until his death in 1930. He wrote 130 opinions, many of them addressing issues related to government, business, and especially bankruptcy.

"We may and do assume that the freedom of speech and of the press … are among the fundamental personal rights and liberties protected … from impairment by the States."
—Edward T. Sanford

Although neglected by history because of the accomplishments of his celebrated contemporaries, Sanford made a major contribution in the area of civil liberties. In particular, he helped develop the so-called incorporation doctrine—the Supreme Court's view that the Bill of Rights applies not only to the federal government but also, in large part, to the states. During much of the nineteenth century, states conferred fewer rights upon their citizens than those extended by the federal Bill of Rights, even after ratification of the fourteenth amendment. With the

intervention of the Supreme Court, this began to change at the turn of the century. In the mid-1920s, Sanford helped effect the change in two important cases concerning freedom of speech.

The first case dealt with a state's power to control the press. In gitlow v. new york, 268 U.S. 652, 45 S. Ct. 625, 69 L. Ed. 1138 (1925), the Court considered New York's conviction of a leftist author under the state's anarchy law of 1902. The broader question for the Court was, Should the First Amendment be extended to the states? Sanford's opinion upheld the conviction because, in the Court's view, states should be free to prosecute citizens who advocate violent overthrow of government. But on the broader question of the Bill of Rights, Sanford wrote that the First Amendment applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. Gitlow served as the foundation for subsequent cases in which the Court would strike down state laws that violated the First Amendment. In 1927 the Court upheld a defense based on the doctrine enunciated in Gitlow in Fiske v. Kansas, 274 U.S. 380, 47 S. Ct. 655, 71 L. Ed. 1108. In his opinion, Sanford underscored that states must guarantee First Amendment rights.

Throughout his tenure on the Court, Sanford voted consistently with Chief Justice Taft. Sanford died at age sixty-four on March 8, 1930—the same day that Taft died.

further readings

Friedman, Leon, and Fred L. Israel, eds. 1995. The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789–1969: Their Lives and Major Opinions. New York: Chelsea House.

Sanford, Edward Terry (b. Knoxville, Tenn., 23 July 1865; d. Washington, D.C., 8 Mar. 1930; interred Greenwood Cemetery, Knoxville), associate justice, 1923–1930. Born a few months after the end of the Civil War, Edward Terry Sanford was influenced during his formative years by his wealthy southern family and its close New England ties. Sanford was educated extensively at both southern and northern schools, earning undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Tennessee and from Harvard. This background enhanced a significant personality trait in Sanford—that of balancing interests. Following completion of his law degree at Harvard, Sanford studied abroad before returning to Tennessee to practice law.

Sanford's pre‐Court career included private law practice in Tennessee (1890–1907), lecturer in law at the University of Tennessee (1898–1907), special assistant to the attorney general of the United States (1906), assistant attorney general (1907), and federal district judge for eastern and middle Tennessee (1908–1923). His nomination to the United States Supreme Court in 1923 was secured by the lobbying efforts of Chief Justice William H. Taft and Attorney General Harry Daugherty who urged President Warren G. Harding to select Sanford because of his lower federal court experience and his cosmopolitan education. As a southern Republican Sanford was acceptable to Harding, who had received political support in the South.

Sanford's greatest impact on American constitutional law came in the area of civil liberties and involved the establishment of the incorporation doctrine. Originally the guarantees to the Bill of Rights applied only at the federal level. The controversy leading to the Civil War demonstrated that all states did not guarantee personal, fundamental liberties. The Fourteenth Amendment purported to do this. The extent of this guarantee was tested during the early twentieth century when state and federal authorities reacted to political unrest with repressive laws. In a series of cases the Supreme Court had to balance both state and national police power against individual rights.

In this setting Justice Sanford articulated this incorporation doctrine in two major cases. In Gitlow v. New York (1925) Sanford, writing for the Court, included dicta stating that the First Amendment's freedom of speech and press clauses were fundamental to personal liberty and protected from state infringement. Although the holding sustained the conviction of a publisher whose pamphlets urged violent overthrow of government, Sanford's dicta had major significance. The incorporation doctrine would use the liberty guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment against state action to extend the rights listed in the Bill of Rights. Sanford further enunciated the doctrine two years later in Fiske v. Kansas (1927), where, in speaking for the Court, he upheld a defense invoking the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee the federal right of free speech against a state criminal anarchy statute. (See Speech and the Press.)

More highly visible justices like Holmes and Brandeis overshadowed Sanford in life, while the fact that he died on the same day as Chief Justice Taft obscured him in death.

Alice Fleetwood Bartee