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
