William Howard Taft
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56. John G. Sotos, MD, “Taft and Pickwick: Sleep Apnea in the White House,” CHEST 124, no. 3 (Sept. 2003): 1137, http://dx.doi.org/10.1378/chest.124.3.1133.
57. David Potash, “Commentary,” in The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, vol. 5, ed. David Potash and Donald F. Anderson (Athens: Ohio University Press 2003), 11.
58. William Howard Taft, Popular Government: Its Essence, Its Permanence, and Its Perils, in The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, vol. 5, 21.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid., 37.
61. Ibid., 54.
62. Ibid., 57.
6: “I LOVE JUDGES AND I LOVE COURTS”
1. Lawrence F. Abbott, ed., Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt, Military Aide, vol. 2 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1930), 439.
2. Lawrence F. Abbott, ed., Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt, Military Aide, vol. 1 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1930), 310.
3. Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft, vol. 2 (Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 1986), 955.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 958.
6. Jonathan Lurie, William Howard Taft: The Travails of a Progressive Conservative (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 197.
7. Robert Post, “Mr. Taft Becomes Chief Justice,” University of Cincinnati Law Review 76 (2008): 761, 768–70.
8. Ibid., 777.
9. “Supreme Court Nominations: present–1789,” U.S. Senate, https://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/reference/nominations/Nominations.htm [https://perma.cc/RF45-6VB6].
10. Pringle, Taft, vol. 2, 960.
11. Ibid., 965–66.
12. Ibid., 962.
13. Alpheus Thomas Mason, William Howard Taft: Chief Justice (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965), 231.
14. Pringle, Taft, vol. 2, 972.
15. Ibid., 960.
16. Francis Graham Lee, “Commentary,” in The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, vol. 8, ed. Francis Graham Lee (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004), xvii.
17. Robert Post, “The Supreme Court Opinion as Institutional Practice: Dissent, Legal Scholarship, and Decisionmaking in the Taft Court,” Minnesota Law Review 85 (2001): 1267, 1271.
18. Post, “Mr. Taft Becomes Chief Justice,” 779–80.
19. Paolo E. Coletta, The Presidency of William Howard Taft (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1973), 130.
20. Post, “Mr. Taft Becomes Chief Justice,” 779.
21. Lee, “Commentary,” in The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, vol. 8, xviii–xix.
22. “Landmark Legislation: Conference of Senior Circuit Judges,” Stat. 42 (Sept. 14, 1922): 837, https://www.fjc.gov/history/legislation/landmark-judicial-legislation-text-document-12 [https://perma.cc/C2WE-3Q8Z].
23. Robert Post, “Judicial Management and Judicial Disinterest: The Achievements and Perils of Chief Justice William Howard Taft,” Journal of Supreme Court History (1998): 54.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid., 56.
26. Ibid.
27. Mason, Taft: Chief Justice, 56.
28. Ibid., 51.
29. Post, “The Supreme Court Opinion as Institutional Practice,” 1384, app. A.
30. Ibid., 1278.
31. “Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ),” Supreme Court of the United States, https://www.supremecourt.gov/faq.aspx [https://perma.cc/6ZSK-6F28].
32. Post, “The Supreme Court Opinion as Institutional Practice,” 1272–73.
33. Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 2009), 573.
34. Melvin I. Urofsky, The Brandeis-Frankfurter Conversations, Supreme Court Review 1985 (1985): 299, 313 (cited by Post, “Mr. Taft Becomes Chief Justice,” 781).
35. Mason, Taft: Chief Justice, 199.
36. Robert Post, “Chief Justice William Howard Taft and the Concept of Federalism,” Constitutional Commentary 9 (1992): 199, 202.
37. Abbott, Letters of Archie Butt, vol. 1, 293–94.
38. M. Todd Henderson, “From Seriatim to Consensus and Back Again: A Theory of Dissent,” Supreme Court Review 2007 (2007): 283, 325.
39. Post, “The Supreme Court Opinion as Institutional Practice,” 1283.
40. Henderson, “A Theory of Dissent,” 323.
41. Lee Epstein, William M. Landes, and Richard A. Posner, “Are Even Unanimous Decisions in the United States Supreme Court Ideological?,” Northwestern University Law Review 106, no. 2 (2012): 699, 701.
42. Post, “Mr. Taft Becomes Chief Justice,” 787.
43. Post, “The Supreme Court Opinion as Institutional Practice,” 1311.
44. Mason, Taft: Chief Justice, 223.
45. Post, “The Supreme Court Opinion as Institutional Practice,” 1311.
46. Ibid., 1344.
47. Ibid., 1343, n. 230.
48. Ibid., 1318–25.
49. Ibid., 1347.
50. Ibid., 1268.
51. Ibid., 1271.
52. Michael E. Parrish, The Hughes Court: Justices, Rulings, and Legacy (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2002), 23.
53. Lee, The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, vol. 8, 30.
54. Parrish, The Hughes Court, 23.
55. 259 U.S. 20 (1922) (Clarke, J., dissenting).
56. Alexander Bickel, The Unpublished Opinions of Mr. Justice Brandeis: The Supreme Court at Work (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1957), 19.
57. Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co., 259 U.S. at 39 (citing Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 [1918]).
58. Ibid., 38.
59. Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, 261 U.S. 525 (1923) (Taft, C.J., dissenting) (disapproving of the Court’s upholding of Lochner and holding of a congressional act instituting minimum wage legislation for women invalid).
60. Ibid., 562 (Taft, C.J., dissenting).
61. Robert Post, “Federalism, Positive Law, and the Emergence of the American Administrative State: Prohibition in the Taft Court Era,” William & Mary Law Review 48, no. 1 (2006): 87–88 (citing Letter from William Howard Taft to Allen B. Lincoln [Sept. 2, 1918]).
62. Pringle, Taft, vol. 2, 1077.
63. William Howard Taft, The Citizen’s Duty Under Prohibition (Boston: Massachusetts Anti-Saloon League, 1919), 1.
64. 267 U.S. 132.
65. 272 U.S. 52.
66. Urofsky, Brandeis: A Life, 588.
67. Myers, 272 U.S. at 117.
68. Ibid., 134.
69. Ibid., 293 (Brandeis, J., dissenting).
70. 295 U.S. 602.
71. Humphrey’s Executor, 295 U.S. at 629.
72. Christopher S. Yoo, Steven G. Calabresi, and Laurence D. Nee, “The Unitary Executive During the Third Half-Century, 1889–1945,” Faculty Scholarship Paper No. 785 (2005): 43, http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/785.
73. Lee, The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, vol. 8, 258.
74. Yoo, Calabresi, and Nee, “The Unitary Executive,” 42.
75. Taft, “Inaugural Address,” 54.
76. Gong Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78, 87 (1927).
77. John G. Sotos, MD, “Taft and Pickwick: Sleep Apnea in the White House,” CHEST 124, no. 3 (2003): 1137.
78. Pringle, Taft, vol. 2, 1077.
79. Ibid., 1074.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid., 1078.
82. Ibid., 1079.
83. Visit by author to U.S. Supreme Court, Washington, D.C., Apr. 19, 2017.
84. Mason, Taft: Chief Justice, 136–37.
EPILOGUE
1. Melvin I. Urofsky, Bra
ndeis: A Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 2009), 572.
2. Peri E. Arnold, Remaking the Presidency: Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson, 1901–1916 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009), 10.
3. Ibid., 108.
4. Letter from William Howard Taft to Nellie Taft, July 22, 1912, in Lewis L. Gould, ed., My Dearest Nellie: The Letters of William Howard Taft to Helen Herron Taft (1909–1912) (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), 235.
5. Lawrence F. Abbott, ed., Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt, Military Aide, vol. 2 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1930), 593.
6. Lawrence F. Abbott, ed., Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt, Military Aide, vol. 1 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1930), 110–11.
7. W. Carey McWilliams, “Commentary,” in The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, vol. 6, ed. W. Carey McWilliams and Frank X. Gerrity (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003), 8.
8. William Howard Taft, “Veto Message Before the House of Representatives Returning Without Approval a Joint Resolution for Admission of New Mexico and Arizona into the Union as States,” Aug. 22, 1911, in The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, vol. 4, ed. David H. Burton (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002), 151–52.
9. William Howard Taft, Liberty Under Law: An Interpretation of the Principles of Our Constitutional Government, in The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, vol. 8, ed. Francis Graham Lee (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004), 8.
10. Abbott, Letters of Archie Butt, vol. 1, 313–14.
11. Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2013), 736.
12. Abbott, Letters of Archie Butt, vol. 1, 201.
13. Ibid., vol. 2, 498.
14. Ibid., vol. 1, 38.
15. Ibid., 151.
Milestones
1857
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on September 15.
1878
Graduates from Yale second in his class; delivers senior oration as salutatorian.
Enrolls in the University of Cincinnati Law School.
1880
Graduates from law school and passes the bar exam.
1880–1881
Works part-time as a reporter for the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune.
1881
Becomes assistant prosecutor of Hamilton County.
1882
Appointed collector of internal revenue in Cincinnati.
1883
Resigns as collector; works as an attorney in private practice.
1886
Marries Helen (“Nellie”) Herron.
1887
Becomes a judge on the Ohio Superior Court.
1889
His son Robert Alphonso Taft is born.
1890
Appointed solicitor general of the United States.
1891
His father, Alphonso Taft, dies; his daughter, Helen Herron Taft, is born.
1892
Becomes a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
1896
Named dean of the University of Cincinnati Law School.
William McKinley is elected president.
1897
His son Charles Phelps Taft II is born.
1900
Named chairman of the Philippines Commission; arrives in Manila.
1901
Becomes civil governor of the Philippines.
McKinley is assassinated, and Theodore Roosevelt becomes president.
Declines appointment as an associate justice of the Supreme Court.
1902
Roosevelt declares the Philippine-American war over.
1903
Declines a second appointment as an associate justice of the Supreme Court.
1904
Becomes secretary of war.
Visits Panama to oversee construction of the Panama Canal.
Theodore Roosevelt is elected president in his own right.
1906
Serves temporarily as provisional governor of Cuba.
1907
His mother, Louisa Taft, dies.
1908
Accepts the Republican nomination for president and is elected the twenty-seventh president of the United States.
1909
Sworn in as president on March 4.
Signs Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act.
Appoints Horace Harmon Lurton to the Supreme Court.
The Pinchot-Ballinger affair erupts.
1910
Roosevelt delivers his “New Nationalism” speech at Osawatomie, Kansas.
Appoints Charles Evans Hughes, Willis Van Devanter, and Joseph Rucker Lamar to the Supreme Court and elevates Justice Edward Douglass White to be chief justice.
1911
Mobilizes twenty thousand American soldiers on the Mexican border.
Supreme Court orders dissolution of Standard Oil and American Tobacco companies.
Signs Canadian Tariff Reciprocity Agreement, which Canada rejects.
Signs arbitration treaties with France and England and vetoes tariff reductions.
Taft administration files suit against U.S. Steel for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act.
1912
Appoints Mahlon Pitney to the Supreme Court.
Is renominated by the Republican Party for president during a bitter convention fight that splits the party.
Roosevelt forms the Progressive Party (also called the Bull Moose Party) and runs as its candidate for president.
Sends marines to Cuba and Santo Domingo and battleships to Nicaragua.
Woodrow Wilson wins presidential election, defeating Taft and Roosevelt.
1913
The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments are ratified.
Vetoes literacy tests for immigrants and the Webb-Kenyon Interstate Liquor Act.
Leaves office and returns to Yale to teach law.
Publishes Popular Government: Its Essence, Its Permanence, and Its Perils.
1914
Publishes The Anti-Trust Act and the Supreme Court.
1916
Publishes Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers.
1917
The United States declares war on Germany.
1918
Is named as co-chairman of the National War Labor Board.
World War I ends.
1919
Theodore Roosevelt dies.
Eighteenth Amendment ratified, authorizing Prohibition.
1920
League of Nations founded.
Warren G. Harding is elected president.
1921
Appointed the tenth chief justice of the United States.
1922
Writes the opinions in Stafford v. Wallace and Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co.
Congress passes Conference of Senior Circuit Judges Act of 1922.
Publishes Liberty Under Law.
1923
Issues a rare dissent in Adkins v. Children’s Hospital.
Harding dies in office; Calvin Coolidge becomes president.
1925
Congress passes the Judiciary Act of 1925.
Writes the opinion in Carroll v. United States.
1926
Writes the opinion in Myers v. United States.
1927
Joins Justice Holmes’s opinion in Buck v. Bell.
1928
Writes the opinion in Olmstead v. United States.
Herbert Hoover elected president.
1929
After lobbying by Taft, Congress allocates funds for a new Supreme Court building.
1930
Resigns from the Supreme Court on February 3.
Dies on March 8.
Selected Bibliography
Abbott, Lawrence F., ed. Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters
of Archie Butt, Military Aide. 2 vols. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1930.
Anderson, Judith Icke. William Howard Taft: An Intimate History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1981.
Anthony, Carl Sferrazza. Nellie Taft: The Unconventional First Lady of the Ragtime Era. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.