The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller, 1888-1910 , livre ebook
181
pages
English
Ebooks
2012
Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage
Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement
Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement
181
pages
English
Ebook
2012
Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage
Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Publié par
Date de parution
01 novembre 2012
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781611171716
Langue
English
The safeguarding of economic rights during Fuller's tenure
In this comprehensive interpretation of the Supreme Court during the pivotal tenure of Melville W. Fuller, James W. Ely Jr., provides a judicial biography of the man who led the Court from 1888 until 1910 as well as a comprehensive and thoughtful analysis of the jurisprudence dispensed under his leadership. Highlighting Fuller's skills as a judicial administrator, Ely argues that a commitment to economic liberty, the security of private property, limited government, and states' rights guided Fuller and his colleagues in their treatment of constitutional issues.
Ely directly challenges the conventional idea that the Fuller Court adopted laissez-faire principles in order to serve the needs of business. Rather Ely presents the Supreme Court's efforts to safeguard economic rights not as a single-minded devotion to corporate interests but as a fulfillment of the propertyconscious values that shaped the constitution-making process in 1787. The resulting study illuminates a range of related legal issues, including the Supreme Court's handling of race relations, criminal justice, governmental authority, and private law disputes.
Publié par
Date de parution
01 novembre 2012
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781611171716
Langue
English
The Chief Justiceship of
MELVILLE W. FULLER
CHIEF JUSTICESHIPS OF THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT
Herbert A. Johnson, General Editor
The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller, 1888-1910 by James W. Ely, Jr.
The Supreme Court in the Early Republic: The Chief Justiceships of John Jay and Oliver Ellsworth by William R. Casto
The Chief Justiceship of
MELVILLE W. FULLER, 1888–1910
James W. Ely, Jr.
The University of South Carolina Press
© 1995 University of South Carolina Press
Cloth edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 1995 Paperback edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 2012 Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina, by the University of South Carolina Press, 2012
www.sc.edu/uscpress
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition as follows:
Ely, James W., 1938–
The chief justiceship of Melville W. Fuller, 1888–1910 / James W. Ely, Jr.
p. cm. (Chief justiceships of the United States Supreme Court)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-57003-018-9
1. Fuller, Melville Weston, 1833–1910 Biography. 2. United States. Supreme Court History. 3. Judges United States History. I. Title. II. Series.
KF8745.F8E44 1995
347.73'2634 dc20
B
347.3073534
B
94-18691
ISBN: 978-1-61117-171-6 (ebook)
To my mother, Edythe F. Ely, and the memory of my father, J. Wallace Ely
CONTENTS
Editor’s Preface
Preface
Introduction
1 A Gentleman and a Scholar
2 Never a Better Administrator
3 Conservative Jurisprudence in the Age of Enterprise
4 Safeguarding Entrepreneurial Liberty
5 Defending the National Market
6 Civil Liberties, Equal Rights, and Criminal Justice
7 Issues of Government
8 Private Litigation
9 Betting on the Future
Appendix:
Members of the Supreme Court During Fuller’s Chief Justiceship, 1888–1910
Dates of Service on the Fuller Court
Bibliography
Table of Cases
Index
EDITOR’S PREFACE
This series will provide readers with a convenient scholarly introduction to the work and achievements of the Supreme Court of the United States. Separate volumes will examine one or more chief justiceships, illuminating the Court’s contribution to constitutional law, international law, and private law during that time period.
Assignment of volumes by chief justices’ terms follows well-established historical traditions that may well be attributable to the now discredited view that Chief Justice John Marshall dominated his colleagues on the Supreme Court bench. However, this series organization is not intended to apotheosize the Chief Justices of the United States. Rather it seeks to place each chief justice into the context of his personal and professional relationships with other members of the Court. Thus its focus upon the chief justice is simply a means toward examination of all members of the Court. That viewpoint also facilitates examination of the way in which the Court conducted its business, since the chief justice is the primary manager of the flow of cases and opinions through the Court. Leadership in the collegial atmosphere of the Supreme Court is a function of interpersonal relationships, for the chief justice has no authority to command obedience. He must call upon the respect and deference that his associate justices are willing to accord him. Attention to the work of the chief justice inevitably requires close examination of all relationships among the justices.
Professor Ely’s volume, as the first to be published in this series, provides high standards of scholarship and readability for those which follow it. His subject is the chief justiceship of Melville W. Fuller, a man of considerable ability elevated to the chief justice’s position in part due to unusual political circumstances. Fuller was a successful Chicago lawyer well placed in the Democratic political organization. When nominated by President Grover Cleveland he was ranked among the leadership of the Illinois bar, and was known for his conservative political philosophy. He brought to the Court a gift for efficient management and a talent for moderating discord. Fuller was the beneficiary of his wife’s success as a hostess, and frequently entertained his Court colleagues at dinner. Rightly Ely refrains from pressing Fuller’s claim to intellectual ascendancy among the justices. He gives due credit to the substantial and creative contributions of Justices Stephen J. Field, David Brewer, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.
The Fuller Court, and many of those following it, have been viewed in historical scholarship as proponents of laissez faire jurisprudence, based upon the supposed influence of social Darwinism in all areas of American life. It was this Court that decided Lochner v. New York (1905), providing reform-minded law professors and historians a new term of opprobrium, “The Lochner Era.” Against this background Professor Ely’s book is mildly revisionist. He demonstrates that while the Court favored economic growth and free competition as a general pattern, there are many decisions which delimit business and economic freedom when the public interest dictated that there be governmental restraint.
An intriguing aspect of this volume is Ely’s description of a Supreme Court that seems to have had its feet firmly planted in nineteenth-century values of Jacksonian democracy. Yet it increasingly had to grapple with twentieth-century problems of economic regulation, complex federal-state relations, and international affairs. Beneath what appears to be a relatively calm period of the Court’s history, the law’s adaptation to societal change continued to gain momentum. Change was in the air during the Fuller years, and Professor Ely, without diverting attention from the Supreme Court, nevertheless makes the reader aware of the extrajudicial events of the day. They included the maturation of the labor union movement, the rise of agrarian discontent and revolt, and the growing political power of reform-minded individuals at the local, state, and national levels.
Written lucidly with a broad view of the place of the Supreme Court in American history and life, this volume provides readers with a comprehensive view of the Fuller years and helps to modify the pro-business stereotype that has so long discouraged scholars from taking a more balanced view of law in the Gilded Age.
Herbert A. Johnson
PREFACE
All commentators agree that the Supreme Court began to play an increasingly important role in the determination of public policy during the late nineteenth century. But historians have engaged in a fierce debate over the nature and extent of this judicial involvement. The aim of this volume is to provide a detailed analysis of the behavior of the Supreme Court during the pivotal tenure of Melville W. Fuller as chief justice.
This book is in the style of a judicial biography. Although one focus is on Fuller’s leadership, careful attention is also given to the work of the Supreme Court as a whole and the course of decisions. How did Fuller guide the Court? How did the justices respond to the novel legal issues raised by the emerging industrial order? How did the Supreme Court under Fuller relate to the larger political and economic currents of American history? These are the questions that I have endeavored to answer. The conclusions may cause us to recast the conventional interpretation of the significance and impact of the Fuller Court.
Given the nature of this project, it was necessary to make difficult decisions regarding coverage of certain subjects. In many places this volume skims the surface of broad issues. Some individual topics treated briefly, such as railroad regulation, the liberty of contract, and the 1894 income tax, warrant a book in their own right.
Readers should also be aware of several features of this volume. The full citation for decisions discussed in the text can be found in the Table of Cases. In addition, an appendix indicating the tenure of all justices on the Supreme Court during Fuller’s tenure has been placed at the end of the volume. Much of the information contained in this work was drawn from archival sources. I have used the following abbreviations in referring to these sources in the notes: LC: Library of Congress; and CHS: Chicago Historical Society.
The author of a book accumulates many obligations. I have benefited greatly from the generous help of many people in the course of writing this volume. Herbert A. Johnson, the general editor of the chief justices of the United States series, provided constant encouragement and sage advice. I am especially indebted to Herman Belz, Jon W. Bruce, Paul Kens, A. E. Keir Nash, Walter F. Pratt, Jr., and Nicholas S. Zeppos for reading some or all of the manuscript and offering thoughtful critiques. Donald J. Hall, Paul Janicke, Craig C. Joyce, and Robert K. Rasmussen made keen observations about particular sections of the text. R. Ben Brown and Linda Przybyszewski commented upon part of chapter 3 when I presented it as a paper at the American Society for Legal History in October 1993.
During the course of my research on this book, I have received valuable cooperation and assistance. I wish to thank especially Howard A. Hood and Peter J. Garland of the Massey Law Library of Vanderbilt University for their skill and patience in locating materials. J. Gordon Hylton kindly shared his study of voting patterns on the Fuller Court. I am also grateful fo
