LURTON, HORACE HARMON

Horace Harmon Lurton epitomized late-nineteenth-century judicial conservatism. Whether he was on the state or federal bench, restraint characterized Lurton's opinions. After a successful period in private practice in the 1860s and 1870s, Lurton won election to the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1886. He was its chief justice in 1893; a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, from 1893 to 1909; and a professor and eventually

law school dean at Vanderbilt University starting in 1898. In 1910, at age sixty-six, he became the oldest justice ever appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lurton was born in Newport, Kentucky, on February 26, 1844. The son of an itinerant physician-turned-preacher, he spent a humble childhood in Tennessee. The defining moment in his life came while he was a sixteen-year-old undergraduate studying at Douglas University, in Chicago. When the Civil War broke out, Lurton immediately left school to join the Confederate army. After refusing discharge for a lung condition, he was captured; escaped; and then, while helping conduct guerrilla raids on Union forces, imprisoned again. He was thought to be near death in the last months of the war when his mother successfully appealed to President

abraham lincoln to release him for health reasons.

The experience of war gave Lurton new priorities. Rather than returning to finish his degree in Chicago, he chose to pursue law at Cumberland University Law School, in Lebanon, Tennessee. After graduating in 1867, he distinguished himself in private practice as a diligent, detail-oriented attorney. In 1875 he was appointed to fill a vacated judgeship in the Sixth Chancery Division of Tennessee, where he served for three years before financial pressures made him return to practicing law. The judgeship cemented his reputation, and his practice flourished over the next decade. In 1886 he ran for a seat on the Tennessee Supreme Court. Lurton won. For the next seven years, he was regarded as an eminently fair, patient, and courteous judge. Not the least of his admirers were his colleagues on the Tennessee high court: by a unanimous vote, they made him the court's chief justice in 1893. While on the court he also taught law at Vanderbilt University.

No sooner had Lurton been made chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court than President grover cleveland tapped him for the federal bench. Lurton resigned from the Tennessee Supreme Court and took his seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati. On the appellate court, Lurton continued to pursue the conservative legal philosophy that had guided his earlier career. He placed extreme importance on the separation of powers, preferring to have legislatures make laws and abhorring modification of the law by the courts.

In 1905 Lurton served as dean of the Vanderbilt University law school. He was nearly appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1906 by the reform-minded President theodore roosevelt. The Republican president's selection was a measure of the respect that the Democratic judge had garnered. Roosevelt only backed off from appointing Lurton when he was persuaded to choose a Republican instead.

In December 13, 1909, President william howard taft had no qualms about appointing a Democrat, or about appointing the oldest candidate in Supreme Court history. Some opposition was raised over Lurton's age; more complaints were directed at the narrowness of his outlook. Nevertheless, the Senate approved the nomination and Lurton received his commission only one week later. There proved to be no reason for worry: as an associate justice, Lurton largely followed the lead of the majority. Commentators are generally at a loss to find much of note in Lurton's tenure on the Court, which lasted four years until his death. It was the Progressive Era, and the Court was often concerned with the issue of government regulatory power, particularly in antitrust, the area of law devoted to enforcing fair competition in business. Although he had always resisted so-called judge-made law, Lurton joined in the Court's unanimous decisions in groundbreaking antitrust cases such as Standard Oil v. United States, 221 U.S. 1, 31 S. Ct. 502, 55 L. Ed. 619 (1911), and American Tobacco Co. v. United States, 221 U.S. 106, 31 S. Ct. 632, 55 L. Ed. 663 (1911).

"The duty of the court is limited to the decision of actual pending controversies."
—Horace Lurton

Lurton died July 12, 1914, in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

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.

Lurton, Horace Harmon (b. Newport, Ky., 26 Feb. 1844; d. Atlantic City, N.J., 12 July 1914; interred Greenwood Cemetery, Clarksville, Tenn.), associate justice, 1910–1914. Born in northern Kentucky, the son of a pious doctor who became an Episcopalian minister, Horace Harmon Lurton was taken by his parents while still a child to Clarksville, Tennessee, the town he ever after regarded as home. His college education at Douglas University in Chicago interrupted by the Civil War, the teenage Lurton proved himself an ardent Confederate soldier, reenlisting after a discharge for physical disability and after escape from a northern prisoner‐of‐war camp. Serving under General John Hunt Morgan during the raid into Ohio, Lurton was again captured, this time allegedly gaining parole by President Abraham Lincoln in response to his mother's appeal. After the war the young veteran entered law school at Cumberland University, from which he graduated in 1867. Married the same year to Mary Frances Owen, Lurton was admitted to the Tennessee bar and settled in Clarksville, where he practiced law until 1886 except for 1875–1878, when he served as one of the state's chancellors. Elected to the Tennessee supreme court on the Democratic ticket in 1886, the forty‐two‐year‐old Lurton began a judicial career that lasted the rest of his life.

In January 1893 he became chief justice of Tennessee, only to resign a few months later when President Grover Cleveland appointed him to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati. On the federal bench Lurton developed a warm friendship with William Howard Taft, then presiding judge. Despite active judicial service, Lurton found time to teach law at Vanderbilt University from 1898 and was dean of the law school from 1905. In December 1909 President Taft named his friend to the Supreme Court. At age sixty‐five Lurton was the oldest man ever appointed; as a southern Democrat and Confederate veteran, he was a surprising choice for a Republican president.

Soon after his appointment, Lurton addressed a meeting of the Maryland and Virginia Bar Associations. His speech on the topic “A Government of Law or a Government of Men?” was an uninspired restatement of conservative judicial values, eschewing liberal construction of the Constitution, judicial lawmaking in the interests of social advancement, and infringements on states' rights, spiced by nativist fears of foreign immigrants (see Judicial Review; Federalism). His opinions as an associate justice during his brief tenure were in accord with this opening statement, although he did prove willing to tolerate modest progressive reform; at his death even his eulogist confessed that he had rendered “no startling or sensational decisions.” Perhaps his most significant contribution was in drafting the Federal Equity Rules of 1912, which remained in force until the abolition of federal equity practice in 1938.

A Cleveland Democrat who reached the Court during the era of Republican ascendancy, Lurton typified the consensus that underlay party differences. A sincere believer in the verities of small‐town America, Lurton was one of a generation of judges who retarded needed reforms, not least by his transparent honesty and integrity.

Bibliography

James F. Watts, Jr. , Horace Harmon Lurton, in The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789–1969, Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, eds. vol. 3 (1969), pp. 1847–1863.

John V. Orth