Gray, Horace (b. Boston, Mass., 24 March 1828; d. Nahant, Mass., 15 Sept. 1902; interred Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Mass.), associate justice, 1882–1902. Energized by temporary family financial reverses, Gray studied law at Harvard and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in *1851. From 1853 to 1861 he gained visibility as the reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Judicial Court. In 1864 Gray became the youngest man ever appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Court; nine years later he became its *chief justice.
Gray was a prodigious worker and legal scholar. His manner was formal and unyielding, and he did not hesitate to instruct lawyers upon proper behavior and dress. While on the Massachusetts court, Gray employed recent Harvard Law School graduates, recommended by his half brother Professor John Chipman Gray, as his temporary law clerks. (Louis D.
Brandeis served in this capacity from 1879 to 1881). Gray continued this practice on the U.S. Supreme Court, and in time it became the rule in the American judiciary.
Massachusetts Senator George F. Hoar, a former classmate, claimed credit for Gray's appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the nomination had such considerable support that the candidacy seemed irresistible. President James Garfield died before he could act upon it, and the formal nomination came with his successor, Chester A. Arthur. In Washington, Gray found new stature and also a wife, when on 4 June 1889 he married Jane Matthews, the daughter of his recently deceased colleague, Stanley Matthews.
The Supreme Court that Gray joined in early 1882 was in transition, moving from a steadfast defense of the federal structure to a greater willingness to find new reservoirs of national power in the Constitution (see
Federalism). Gray's reputed nationalism rests on
Juilliard v. Greenman (1884) and
Fong Yue Ting v. United States (1893), in which he saw no constitutional limits on congressional authority, respectively, to issue paper money and to deal with resident aliens. However, despite a reluctance to dissent, he opposed the Court's development of substantive
due process as a limitation on
state action, its search for avenues of escape from the confines of the
Eleventh Amendment, and its commerce clause inroads on state police power. He saw one of his dissents vindicated when Congress passed legislation allowing states to prohibit the shipment of liquor into their jurisdiction.
Of all the decisions in which Gray played a central role, the most notable was United States v.
Wong Kim Ark (1898). Congress had declared Chinese ineligible for naturalization but held that their children born in the United States were citizens. Using Anglo‐American common law as his guide, he interpreted the
Fourteenth Amendment as commanding that
citizenship be made a birthright, no matter the claimant's race or national origin.
Gray's heavy‐handed, drawn‐out opinions that often turned into scholarly historical essays took substantial time to construct, and in his later years his vigor and capacity for work diminished. When a stroke left him partially paralyzed, he resigned contingent on the appointment of his successor. He died before the confirmation of Oliver Wendell
Holmes, who at the time held the same judicial post vacated by Gray twenty years earlier.
Bibliography
Elbridge B. Davis and and Harold A. Davis , Mr. Justice Gray: Some Aspects of His Judicial Career, American Bar Association Journal 41 (May 1955): 421–424, 468–471.
John E. Semonche
