Peckham, Rufus Wheeler (b. Albany, N.Y., 8 Nov. 1838; d. Altamont, N.Y., 24 Oct. 1909; interred Rural Cemetery, Albany), associate justice, 1895–1909. Rufus Peckham came from a prominent New York family of lawyers and judges. He was educated at Albany Boys Academy, studied abroad, and received an honorary degree from Columbia University in 1866. Peckham read law in his father's Albany office and was admitted to the bar in 1859. In private practice he represented mostly corporate clients and established himself as an influential member of the community and Democratic Party. He served as district attorney for Albany County from 1869 to 1872. In 1883 he won election to the New York Supreme Court (the state's lower court). In 1886, Peckham was elected to the state's highest tribunal, the Court of Appeals, where he remained until President Grover Cleveland nominated him to the United States Supreme Court in 1895.
Cleveland's nomination of Peckham followed an attempt to place his brother, Wheeler
Peckham, on the high court. Both brothers were connected with the upstate faction of the New York Democratic party, supporters of Grover Cleveland, and often in conflict with the New York Democratic machine led by U.S. Senator David Hill. Even though Cleveland won the presidency in 1892, the Hill faction remained strong in state politics. They claimed success in placing a Democrat in the governor's office and taking over both houses of the state legislature. In 1893, when Cleveland had the opportunity to fill a place on the Court, he selected William B.
Hornblower. Hill invoked
senatorial courtesy and Hornblower's nomination was defeated. Cleveland's next choice was Wheeler Peckham, whose nomination was also defeated. Finally the president and Senate agreed on Louisiana Senator Edward
White. In 1895 Cleveland had a second opportunity to make an appointment to the Supreme Court and, on 3 December he nominated Rufus Peckham. By this time New York Democrats had suffered major defeats in the previous state elections. Less confident of his strength, Hill acquiesced to the nomination. Rufus Peckham was confirmed on 12 December 1895 and kept his seat on the United States Supreme Court until his death in 1909.
During his thirteen years on the bench, Peckham wrote 315 opinions. Few of them were of lasting importance. Although not as visible as some of his colleagues, Peckham was one of the Court's most consistent advocates of
laissez‐faire constitutionalism. His disdain for government regulation was apparent even while he sat on the New York bench. Dissenting in
People v. Walsh (1889), for example, he called a law that regulated grain elevators “vicious in its nature and communistic in its tendency” (p. 695).
In an era of conservative
judicial activism Peckham soon became a mainstay of the Court's conservatives. His first opinion of note was
Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897), in which the Supreme Court adopted “liberty of contract” as a limit on state regulatory authority (see
Contract, Freedom of). This doctrine provided a rather open‐ended standard against which the court could test the validity of legislation. Peckham refined its application in his most well‐known opinion,
Lochner v. New York (1905). There he ruled that a state law limiting the length of the workday for bakers violated the liberty of contract of both the employee and employer. Peckham emphasized that the state's
police power—the source of its authority to interfere with individual liberty—was limited to protecting public morals, health, safety, and welfare. He held that the workday limitation could not reasonably be considered a health law and was therefore invalid. Peckham believed federal authority to legislate economic regulations should be limited in the same manner. In
Champion v. Ames (1903) he joined a dissent that urged that Congress could not prohibit sale of lottery tickets through the mail.
Shortly before Peckham came to the Court the
Sherman Antitrust Act was significantly weakened by judicial interpretation in the Sugar Trust Case, U.
S. v.
E.C. Knight (1895). In a series of his early opinions, U.
S. v.
Trans‐Missouri Freight Association (1897), U.
S. v.
Joint Traffic Association (1898), and
Addyston Pipe and Steel v. U.
S. (1899), Peckham restored some of the federal government's power to combat monopoly. These decisions indicate that, while Peckham's record undoubtedly reflects a business orientation, the focus of his concern was individual economic liberty.
See also
Due Process, Substantive.
Bibliography
Skolnik , Richard , Rufus Peckham, in The Justices of the United States, Supreme Court, 1789–1969, edited by Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, vol. 3 (1969), pp. 1685–1703.
Paul Kens
