SHIRAS, GEORGE, JR.

George Shiras Jr. served on the U.S. Supreme Court as an associate justice from 1892 to 1903. Plucked by political necessity at the age of sixty from his highly successful law practice, Shiras, who had never been a judge or politician, brought a lawyerly, pragmatic perspective to the Court. He wrote some opinions in favor of civil liberties, occasionally blocked the Court's full embrace of laissez-faire economics, and became notorious as the justice whose vote in 1895 torpedoed the new federal income tax. This last decision, for which Shiras was incorrectly blamed, ultimately led to the ratification of the sixteenth amendment in 1913.

Shiras was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on January 26, 1832, to a wealthy brewing family. He attended Yale Law School in 1853. Two years later he completed his training at a law office in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, before starting a legal practice with his brother. The practice specialized in representing the railroads

and other big industries during the boom era of Pittsburgh. So successful was Shiras that, by the late 1880s, he was earning the then-phenomenal income of $75,000 annually. He developed no national reputation, steering clear of partisan politics even when the state legislature nominated him for a senate seat. Independent in nature, he sometimes represented interests opposed to his business clients.

In 1892 President benjamin harrison nominated Shiras to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the death of Justice joseph p. bradley. Like Bradley, Shiras was a Pennsylvania Republican, and convention dictated that Bradley's replacement be of similar political and geographic origin. Thus for political reasons Shiras was a good choice, even though he had no judicial or political experience. Strong opposition to the nomination came from the president's enemies. But support from powerful, private figures, including Andrew Carnegie, was ultimately persuasive.

" … to declare unlawful residence within the country to be an infamous crime, punishable by deprivation of liberty and property … [without] a judicial trial … is not consistent with the theory of our government."
—George Shiras Jr.

When Shiras joined the Court, the chief issue of the day was regulation of business. The Court was conservative, believing in the hands-off policy of laissez-faire economics. Shiras usually joined his fellow justices in voting to restrict antitrust and labor legislation. But he occasionally stood apart, as in Brass v. North Dakota, 153 U.S. 391, 14 S. Ct. 857, 38 L. Ed. 757 (1894), where he upheld state power to regulate. Moreover, he was committed to civil liberties. In Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228, 16 S. Ct. 977, 41 L. Ed. 140 (1896), he wrote a landmark opinion extending basic rights to Chinese immigrants; it held that Congress had unconstitutionally allowed federal authorities to summarily sentence illegal Chinese aliens to twelve months of hard labor without indictment or a jury trial.

In his lifetime, Shiras became notorious for having cast the swing vote to kill the first peacetime federal income tax. The tax, passed in 1894, was a popular response to the growing disparity in income levels caused by industrial growth. The case was pollock v. farmers' loan & trust, 158 U.S. 601, 15 S. Ct. 912, 39 L. Ed. 1108, decided in three parts in 1895. The final vote, on May 20, was 5–4 against. Critics vilified Shiras for apparently changing his mind from an earlier vote. For nearly three decades, his reputation suffered until, after his death, it was persuasively argued that another justice had provided the swing vote. Pollock led directly to the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, allowing Congress to levy a federal income tax.

Shiras stepped down from the Court in 1903 at age seventy. He died on August 2, 1924, in Pittsburgh.

further readings

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

Shiras, George, III. 1953. Justice George Shiras, Jr., of Pittsburgh, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1892–1903: A Chronicle of His Family, Life, and Times. Ed. and completed by Winfield Shiras. Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press.

Shiras, George, Jr. (b. Pittsburgh, Pa., 26 January 1832; d. Pittsburgh, Pa., 2 August 1924; interred Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh), associate justice, 1892–1903. George Shiras, Jr., was an obscure but nonetheless important justice in determining winning blocs on the Court and designating accepted constitutional interpretations. His career demonstrated the impact that background variables of family position, educational experience, and pre‐Court career can have on judicial attitudes.

The son of a wealthy, retired brewery merchant turned gentleman farmer, Shiras was raised to respect property and business entrepreneurship. Educated at Yale College, Shiras also spent a short time at the law school there. Throughout the Civil War he left military service to his brothers, concentrating instead on his expanding, lucrative corporate law practice. He refused positions in public service, rejecting a senatorial nomination in 1881 on the grounds that it would make him a pawn of Pennsylvania's Republican party machine.

Although Shiras lacked both judicial and public service experience, he was nevertheless nominated to the bench of the United States Supreme Court in July 1892 by President Benjamin Harrison. Two factors were critical in his selection: first, he was from the same geographic section as his predecessor on the Court; and second, he had demonstrated independence of the anti‐Harrison faction of the Pennsylvania Republican party.

Shiras brought to the Court a professional style and a social and economic ideology that shaped his and the Court's constitutional positions from 1892 to 1903. During this time the Court expanded judicial review of socioeconomic legislation through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Shiras's lawyerly approach to case facts and precedent meant that he did not always agree with the bloc of ultraconservative justices dedicated to the establishment of laissez‐faire economics through strict judicial review of state and national progressive reform laws (see Laissez‐Faire Constitutionalism). Thus in Brass v. North Dakota (1894) Shiras produced a liberal opinion upholding state police power to regulate business. Shiras's social and economic background, however, appeared directly in a long line of conservative decisions from United States v. E. C. Knight (1895) to Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897) that struck down national and state regulatory laws. In these cases Shiras voted to restrict the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and to use the freedom of contract doctrine to annul labor and other social legislation.

Identified by history as the justice who made the Sixteenth Amendment necessary, Shiras's legal reputation has suffered undeservedly. He was accused of having “Shirased,” that is, torpedoed, the most promising reform measure of the 1890s, the income tax. While it was true that he was one of the five justices voting to strike down the income tax in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895), Shiras himself was not apparently the pivotal vote. And this focus has obscured Shiras's liberal civil liberties decisions where he adopted a consistent due process approach and, as in Wong Wing v. United States (1896), protested denial of basic rights to individuals.

Alice Fleetwood Bartee