WAITE, MORRISON REMICK

Morrison Remick Waite served as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1874 to 1888. Waite's rise to national prominence came unexpectedly. Although a distinguished lawyer in Ohio, he had never argued before the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, in 1871 he was asked to represent the United States in post–Civil War claims against Great Britain, and his success brought him widespread acclaim. On the strength of this reputation, President ulysses s. grant nominated Waite to lead the U.S. Supreme Court. His performance there, however, never won him the same praise. Waite's business decisions provoked the ire of powerful interests, and twentieth-century critics have condemned his limited view of civil rights.

Born on November 29, 1816, in Lyme, Connecticut, Waite was the son of a successful attorney and jurist who was the state court's chief justice. Educated at Yale University, Waite graduated in 1837, studied law under his father, and then was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1839. Over the next decade, he split his time between legal practice and politics. He was elected to the Ohio legislature in 1849 as a member of the whig party, and later helped to form the state's branch of the republican party.

By the late 1800s, Waite was quite successful. He had built two law firms and enjoyed prominence within Ohio. Yet because he had no significant national reputation, he was surprised when, in 1871, he was chosen for a task of national importance: representing the United States in its post–Civil War arbitration

with Great Britain, better known as the Alabama claims. The United States charged that Great Britain had aided the Confederacy by supplying warships during the u.s. civil war, and it sought to recover damages at the 1871 Geneva Arbitration Council. Waite and his two colleagues succeeded spectacularly, winning a $15 million settlement. At home, they were showered with acclaim. Two years later, Waite added to his growing reputation by serving as president of the Ohio Constitutional Convention.

"For protection against abusers by legislatures the people must resort to the polls, not to the courts."
—Morrison R. Waite

Upon the sudden death of Chief Justice salmon p. chase, President Grant looked unsuccessfully for a replacement before turning

to Waite. Grant's administration had not fared well; choosing one of the heroes of the Geneva victory appeared fortuitous. Although Waite had no experience before the Supreme Court, he accepted the appointment and overcame long odds against success. His status as an outsider and the presence of a strong-minded group of associate justices did not deter him from administering the Court effectively.

In outlook, Waite was a supporter of states' rights. He usually favored state power to regulate business and determine civil rights. Yet both in his time and afterward, his decisions have drawn condemnation. In munn v. illinois, 94 U.S. 113, 24 L. Ed. 77 (1876), he upheld an Illinois law that imposed charges on the owners of grain elevators, asserting that such regulation was proper in areas "affected with a public interest." This position provoked fierce criticism from powerful business interests. Waite's reputation also suffered posthumously in the wake of the twentieth century's embrace of civil rights. His decision in Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 162, 22 L. Ed. 627 (1874), allowed states to deny women the right to vote. Waite held that voting privileges were a right of U.S. citizenship and stated that the fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution did not confer additional privileges and immunities upon citizens.

In United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 23 L. Ed. 588 (1875), Waite set aside the convictions of white men who had taken part in the killing of more than one hundred black men in the 1873 Colfax Massacre, which followed a disputed election. Always concerned about the encroachment of federal power, Waite ruled that their indictment under federal law was faulty; such cases, he said, belonged in state courts. But state courts in the post–Civil War South were unlikely to prosecute such cases, and rather than leading to prosecutions, the decision only encouraged more bloodshed while dealing a blow to Congress's plan for Reconstruction in the South.

In appraising Waite's jurisprudence, twentieth-century critics have been harsh. They have criticized his narrow interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment as a repudiation of the intent of the amendment's framers. In defense, some observers have noted his valuation of state power to regulate the economy. He died on March 23, 1888, in Washington, D.C.

further readings

Aynes, Richard L. 1993. "On Misreading John Bingham and the Fourteenth Amendment." Yale Law Journal 103 (October).

Magrath, C. Peter. 1963. Morrison R. Waite: The Triumph of Character. New York: Macmillan.

Stephenson, D. Grier, Jr. 2003. The Waite Court: Justices, Rulings, and Legacy. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO.

Waite, Morrison Remick (b. Lyme, Conn., 29 Nov. 1816; d. Washington, D.C., 23 March 1888; interred Forest Cemetery, Toledo, Ohio), chief justice, 1874–1888. The eldest son of a lawyer who became chief justice of Connecticut, Morrison Remick Waite was destined for a career in law. After graduating from Yale in 1837, he read law with his father for a year, then joined the westward migration of enterprising Yankees, settling in Maumee, Ohio. After a further apprenticeship with a local lawyer, Waite was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1839, promptly entering into partnership with his former mentor. In 1840 Waite married his second cousin, Amelia C. Warner, also of Lyme, Connecticut, who trekked west to join him. Active in the Whig party, Waite was elected to the Ohio legislature in 1849. In 1850 he moved his family to Toledo, where he opened a branch office of his law firm. On the retirement of his senior partner in 1856, Waite established a firm with his younger brother Richard. At the same time the future chief justice abandoned the dying Whig party and helped organize the Republican party in Ohio.

Prosperous and respected in Ohio, Waite first attained national prominence in 1871 when he was appointed one of three United States counsel at the Geneva Arbitration Tribunal, convened to settle the Alabama claims. So unexpected was the appointment that Waite at first regarded the telegrams from Washington as a practical joke. When the tribunal ruled in favor of the Americans and awarded fifteen million dollars in damages, the counselors returned home covered in glory. On Chief Justice Salmon Chase's unexpected death in 1873, President Ulysses S. Grant cast about for a nominee, at first among his unscrupulous political cronies. When one after another refused or withdrew, the president was persuaded to reward a Geneva counselor, associated with one of the administration's few triumphs. Waite, who had never once argued before the Supreme Court, was suddenly raised to its head.

On first taking his seat, the new chief justice faced a restive and powerful set of associate justices, some of whom had actively sought the appointment for themselves. Rather unexpectedly, Waite took decisive control of the Court, thereafter showing himself a competent judicial administrator. (See Chief Justice, Office of the.) On the major constitutional issues of the day the new chief justice was a disciple of Roger Taney rather than John Marshall. While recording a few notable nationalizing opinions—such as in the Sinking‐Fund Cases (1879), permitting Congress to amend corporate charters in the public interest—Waite favored the states in the key areas of civil rights and economic regulation. In Minor v. Happersett (1875), he held that denying votes to women was no violation of the Fourteenth Amendment because suffrage was not a right of citizenship. The next year in United States v. Cruikshank (1876) and United States v. *Reese (1876), he wrote opinions that narrowed national protection of the newly freed slaves. At the same time, in Reynolds v. United States (1879), the first church‐state case to reach the Supreme Court, Waite upheld the conviction of a Mormon in a polygamous marriage. (See Religion.)

On the issue of regulation of the economy, Waite's leadership in favor of states' rights was vigorously challenged by Justice Stephen J. *Field. The leading case was Munn v. Illinois (1877), one of a set of related cases known collectively as the Granger Cases. Apparently taking his cue from Justice Joseph P. Bradley, Waite upheld state power to regulate businesses “affected with a public interest,” drawing the wrath of railroads and monied men. Waite's pedestrian writing style deprived Munn and much else that he wrote of public and scholarly recognition; as Felix Frankfurter later put it, “Even in his most famous opinion Waite lacked art.” In a later case, Stone v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Co. (1886), also upholding state power, he made a feeble attempt to improve on Chief Justice Marshall's famous dictum in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819): “This power to regulate is not a power to destroy, and limitation is not the equivalent of confiscation” (p. 331).

The author of civil rights opinions unpopular in the late twentieth century, underrated for his defense of state power to regulate the economy, and unfairly associated with judicial restraints on national regulation that properly belong to a later generation, Waite lacks an outstanding judicial reputation.

Bibliography

C. Peter Magrath , Morrison R. Waite (1963).

John V. Orth

Morrison Remick Waite

Morrison Remick Waite (1816-1888), seventh chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was a skillful administrator of the nation's highest bench.

Born in Lyme, Conn., on Nov. 29, 1816, Morrison R. Waite graduated from Yale in 1837, read law, and began to practice in Maumee, Ohio, moving later to Toledo. A lawyer rather than a politician, he served in the Ohio Legislature (1849-1850) as a Whig. Later he was a Republican but played no conspicuous role in the politics of the Civil War or the Reconstruction era.

Capable and noncontroversial, Waite was named by President Ulysses S. Grant to join Caleb Cushing and William M. Evarts as counsel before the tribunal hearing the Alabama Claims against England for Civil War damages. Waite helped prevent inflammatory peripheral issues from disrupting negotiations, and the United States was awarded $15,500,000 in a decision of major significance in the history of the settlement of international disputes by arbitration.

A prolonged competition for the chief justiceship of the Supreme Court followed the death of Salmon P. Chase in 1873. Bypassing other strong contenders, Grant in 1874 finally named Waite. Respectability and the need to end the leadership crisis won Waite swift confirmation.

On the Supreme Court, Waite's demeanor foreshad-owed the doctrine of judicial restraint. Unlike chief justices John Marshall and Roger B. Taney, he sought less to lead than to follow the thinking of the nation. Tired of the era's racial controversies and convinced that white moderates in the South should establish the racial rules for the region, the Waite Court weakened the concept of national citizenship based on the 14th Amendment. In cases involving violent interruption of a political meeting, refusal to allow a registered black American to vote, and a lynching, the Federal government was not sustained in efforts to protect black citizens. That responsibility was left to state governments. Similarly, the Civil Rights Cases (1883) permitted racial segregation in privately owned places of public accommodation. On the other hand, African Americans had been sustained in their right to serve on juries in Strauder v. West Virginia (1880).

Waite's most famous decision was Munn v. Illinois (1877), which upheld the right of state legislatures to enact granger laws, in this case the regulation of grain storage rates. Retrieving a 17th-century English decision, Waite held that legislators could regulate in a matter "affected with a public interest." Later, however, the countervailing interest of the railroads to avoid such regulation was established when Waite, while avoiding express disavowal of the Munn doctrine, permitted a broad reading of the 14th Amendment that limited the power of government to regulate business.

Waite was married in 1840 to Amelia Champlin Warner; of their five children, four lived beyond childhood. Waite died in Washington, D.C., on March 23, 1888.

Further Reading

An excellent biography of Waite is C. Peter Magrath, Morrison R. Waite: The Triumph of Character (1963). □

Morrison Remick Waite , 1816–88, American jurist, 7th chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1874–88), b. Lyme, Conn. Admitted to the bar in 1839, he became prominent when he represented the United States in prosecuting the Alabama claims . It was Waite's task as chief justice to help interpret the amendments to the Constitution that were adopted after the Civil War. His interpretation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was long influential. Waite maintained that only businesses "clothed with a public interest" might be subject to economic regulation by the states; e.g., a state might set the rates charged by a grain elevator but not the prices of a haberdasher. The Supreme Court essentially adhered to this position until the 1930s.

Bibliography: See biographies by B. R. Trimble (1938, repr. 1970) and C. P. Magrath (1963).