Vinson, Frederick Moore (b. Louisa, Ky., 22 Jan. 1890; d. Washington, D.C., 8 Sept. 1953; interred Louisa, Ky.), chief justice, 1946–1953. The thirteenth chief justice was the son of a small‐town Kentucky jailer. He achieved the highest academic record in the history of Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, earning his LL.B. degree. He soon became city attorney in his hometown. In 1921, he was elected district attorney, and three years later, was elected to Congress. After being defeated in the Republican landslide of 1928, Vinson was sent back to Congress in 1930, where he served four more terms, and on the Committee on Appropriations and the powerful Ways and Means Committee proved a staunch supporter of President Franklin D.
Roosevelt's New Deal.
His legislative skill and collegiality garnered Vinson strong congressional goodwill for later confirmations. President Roosevelt nominated Vinson for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1937. Vinson resigned from the court in May 1943 to become director of Economic Stabilization in the Roosevelt administration. His executive branch experience continued in a brief succession of positions of increasing responsibility (Federal Loan Administrator, director of War Mobilization and Reconversion), culminating with President Harry S. Truman's appointment to be secretary of the treasury in July 1945.
A flurry of speculation and political maneuvering followed the death of Chief Justice Harlan F.
Stone in April 1946 over whether President Truman should elevate a sitting justice and appoint a new associate justice, or simply select a new chief from outside the Court. The infighting intensified when two different justices threatened Truman with their resignations to keep Justice Robert H.
Jackson from being elevated. These bitter disagreements among the justices became personal and public. Truman apparently chose his longtime friend because of Vinson's experience in each of the three branches of government, because Vinson could be expected to support strong governmental action by the executive, and because he thought Vinson had the ability and personality to calm the Court.
That the public rancor dissipated somewhat may have been to Vinson's credit. Ideologically, Vinson usually voted with the conservative justices (Jackson, Felix
Frankfurter, Harold
Burton, and Stanley
Reed) against the liberals (William O.
Douglas, Wiley
Rutledge, Frank
Murphy, and Hugo
Black). The conservative wing began to dominate the Court with the 1949 appointments of Justices Tom C.
Clark and Sherman
Minton.
Vinson was not a philosopher. He never undertook to formulate a broad or systematic view of the Constitution. He was a pragmatic man, guided by a few generalities: democracy is the ideal form of government by the informed judgment of the people; a strong government is essential to preserve individual liberty; and the president ought to lead the government.
During his tenure, the number of cases heard by the Court declined, and he assigned relatively few important cases to himself. One rumored criticism then, which since has become a Supreme Court norm, was that Vinson did all his “writing” with his hands in his pockets, outlining the general approach to his clerk and then suggesting but few revisions in the draft. His most famous opinion was his dissent in
Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), known as the
Steel Seizure Case. When the Court held by a 6‐to‐3 vote that President Truman's seizure of the steel mills during the Korean War was unconstitutional, Vinson sided with the president. Vinson's Cold War worries (see
Communism and Cold War) were best exemplified in
Dennis v. United States (1951), which affirmed criminal convictions against leaders of the American Communist party. Setting the stage for the successor Warren Court, he agreed with challenges brought by African‐Americans against various discriminatory state actions.
A 1970 poll of “experts” rated Vinson as one of eight “failures,” the only chief justice to be so categorized. Other scholars have labeled this characterization unfair. Vinson's tenure on the Court was shorter than most of his counterparts (seven years), and he presided over a Court divided by ideology and personality. His opinions were conservative, except in the area of civil rights, but not poorly reasoned.
Bibliography
C. Herman Pritchett , Civil Liberties and the Vinson Court (1954).
Symposium, In Memoriam: Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, Northwestern University Law Review 49 (1954): 1–75.
Thomas E. Baker
