DAY, WILLIAM RUFUS

William Rufus Day served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1903 to 1922. Day served on a Court dominated by Justice oliver wendell holmes jr., yet Day played a key role during a period when the federal government began to extend its police and regulatory powers.

Day was born April 17, 1849, in Ravenna, Ohio. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1870 and attended its law school for one year. He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1872 and entered practice in Canton, Ohio.

Ohio was a hotbed of republican party politics in the late nineteenth century. Day became active in the party and, more important, became a trusted friend and adviser to william mckinley, who was elected president in 1896. McKinley appointed Day secretary of state in April 1898. Five months later Day was chosen to head the U.S. Peace Commission to negotiate an end to the spanish-american war with Spain. He left his cabinet post to fulfill this duty.

McKinley rewarded Day for his friendship, political counsel, and service as secretary of state with an appointment in 1899 to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. With McKinley's assassination in 1901, Vice President theodore roosevelt assumed the presidency. In 1903 Roosevelt appointed Day to the Supreme Court, in part because Roosevelt needed to strengthen his ties with Ohio Republicans.

Day held a centrist position on the Supreme Court. More liberal justices such as Holmes and louis d. brandeis sought to allow more active government involvement in the national economy. Conservative justices continued to restrict government regulation of business and the growth of federal power. Day took a middle course, though some commentators believe he tilted more to supporting states' rights.

His most famous opinion, hammer v. dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251, 38 S. Ct. 529, 62 L. Ed. 1101 (1918), illustrates his more conservative tendencies. In the early 1900s, Congress sought to regulate the use of child labor, passing a child labor act in 1916 (39 Stat. 675, c. 432, formally known as the Keating-Owen Act). The act prohibited the movement in interstate commerce of goods that were made by children. In Hammer, a manufacturer was charged with violating the act. Under the Constitution's commerce clause, Congress has the right to regulate interstate commerce. Day gave the clause a restrictive reading, ruling that commerce did not include manufactured goods that were themselves harmless. In addition, he said, Congress had intruded into an area of regulation that was reserved to the states. To allow Congress to regulate industry would destroy federalism and the system of government set out in the Constitution.

"Property is more than the mere thing which a person owns. It is elementary that it includes the right to acquire, use, and dispose of it. The Constitution protects these essential attributes of property."
—William Day

Despite this hostility to the Child Labor Act, Day upheld the federal government's power to regulate interstate commerce in other cases that

involved the shipment of impure food, drugs, and liquor. He was also supportive of federal antitrust prosecutions that involved restraint of trade.

However, Day's opposition to federal regulation of the workplace did not carry over to state regulation of industry. This is revealed in his dissent in lochner v. new york, 198 U.S. 45, 25 S. Ct. 539, 49 L. Ed. 937 (1905). In Lochner the Court, on a 5–4 vote, struck down a New York state law that specified a maximum sixty-hour week for bakery employees. The Court ruled that the law was a "meddlesome interference" with business, concluding that the regulation of work hours was an unjustified infringement on "the right to labor, and with the right of free contract on the part of the individual, either as employer or employee." Although Holmes's dissent has received more attention, Day's made clear that the state had the right to promote public welfare, even if it came in conflict with the concept of liberty of contract.

Finally, Day authored the opinion in Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 34 S. Ct. 341, 58 L. Ed. 652 (1914), which established the federal exclusionary rule for criminal evidence seized in violation of the fourth amendment. Day's opinion suggested that exclusion of tainted evidence was implicit in the requirement of the Fourth Amendment. If illegally seized evidence could be admitted in a criminal trial, he said, "the protection of the 4th Amendment … is of no value … and might as well be stricken from the Constitution."

Day retired from the Court in 1922. He died on Mackinac Island, Michigan, on July 9, 1923.

cross-references

Child Labor Laws; Labor Law.

Day, William Rufus (b. Ravenna, Ohio, 17 Apr. 1849; d. Mackinac Island, Mich., 9 Jul. 1923; interred West Lawn Cemetery, Canton, Ohio), associate justice, 1903–1922. Day's formative years were molded by the political environment of post–Civil War Republican party politics in Ohio. Educated at the University of Michigan, Day also spent one year in law school there. His pre‐Court career included a number of roles: trial attorney in Canton, Ohio; personal confidant of President William McKinley; United States secretary of state (1898); and judge on the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (1899–1903). Following McKinley's assassination, President Theodore Roosevelt elevated Day to the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to bolster his support with the Ohio wing of the Republican Party.

During a nineteen‐year career on the Court, Day was overshadowed by prominent jurists such as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis D. Brandeis. Nevertheless, he played a significant role as a swing justice between the Court's liberal and conservative blocs, a role well suited to his finely developed social skills.

The major constitutional issues before the Court during Day's tenure involved, on the one hand, federal power under the Commerce Clause with its corollary issue of federal antitrust policy (see Commerce Power), and on the other hand, the scope of state police powers under the Tenth Amendment. Day has often been identified as a states' rights advocate who, while finding extensive powers for state progressive experimentations, narrowly construed national power under the Commerce Clause (see State Sovereignty and States' Rights). This interpretation is based primarily on his landmark opinion in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918) declaring the 1916 Federal Child Labor Act unconstitutional. Day's opinion defined commerce to exclude manufactured goods that were harmless in and of themselves. The impact of Hammer lasted until 1941 and overshadowed Day's other opinions, which sanctioned federal power to reach interstate traffic of impure food, drugs, and liquor and to prosecute trusts and monopolies that wielded a potential power to restrain trade. Day fully endorsed the use of national power through the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. In United States v. Union Pacific Railway Company (1912), for example, he championed a vigorous exercise of federal police power against giant combinations including railroads, steel industries, lumber companies, and trusts.

Day preferred state to national regulation, however. He gave a liberal, expansive construction to state police powers to enact laws and safety requirements for plants and railroads. His two famous dissents in Lochner v. New York (1905) and Coppage v. Kansas (1915) demonstrated his belief that state promotion of public welfare could override individual claims of liberty of contract and right to work (see Contract, Freedom of). Day also championed progressivism in Green v. Frazier (1920), which sanctioned state taxation to create state‐owned public services. He limited state powers to discriminate on the basis of race, however. Day struck down a city residential zoning ordinance excluding African‐Americans and a state law requiring railroads to provide segregated cars. (See Race and Racism.)

Moving from the ideology of nineteenth‐century liberalism's laissez‐faire into the twentieth‐century's acceptance of the welfare state, Day ultimately became a moderate liberal, upholding governmental power over economic and moral evils.

Alice Fleetwood Bartee

William Rufus Day 1849–1923, American statesman and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1903–22), b. Ravenna, Ohio. Admitted (1872) to the bar, Day practiced law in Ohio and served (1886–90) as judge of the court of common pleas. He became (1897) assistant to the Secretary of State and then (Apr., 1898) Secretary of State in the month when war was declared against Spain. He was successful in converting France and Germany from an attitude of seeming hostility to definite neutrality. Made chairman (Sept., 1898) of the U.S. commission to arrange peace after the Spanish-American War, he insisted upon purchase of the Philippines rather than claiming these islands by right of conquest. The treaty therefore provided for the payment of $20 million. Day became (1899) a judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and in 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to the Supreme Court, where he generally voted for the dissolution of trusts and the preservation of states' rights .