Today in Supreme Court History: September 14, 1901

9/14/1901: President Theodore Roosevelt is inaugurated. He appointed three members to the Supreme Court: Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes, Rufus Day, and William Henry Moody.

President Roosevelt's Appointees to the Supreme Court

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

McCarthy v. Briscoe, 429 U.S. 1316 (decided September 14, 1976): under 28 U.S.C. §1253, one can directly appeal to the Supreme Court from a three-judge District Court decision, but only if the decision was on Constitutional grounds; Powell denies motion to stay order because it was based on equitable doctrine of laches (this was Eugene McCarthy's attempt to get on the ballot in Texas as a third party candidate; the Court later allowed him on, 429 U.S. 1317) (I voted for him that year, though I shouldn't have)

Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. v. Federal Election Comm'n, 542 U.S. 1305 (decided September 14, 2004): Rehnquist refuses to stay operation of the McCain-Feingold Act, which barred corporations from using general funds for "electioneering", allegedly in violation of First Amendment Freedom of Speech; the Court had already held McCain-Feingold "facially Constitutional", the three-judge District Court had already denied the injunction, and "All Writs Act" allowing the Court to issue any order in aid of its appellate jurisdiction is only to be used in "exigent" circumstances (the Court later changed its mind about McCain-Feingold and ruled it unconstitutional in Citizens United, 2010)

[Brett Bellmore]

Pity they took down the statute of the only President Roosevelt who didn't set up concentration camps, and wasn't a racist.

[Mr. Bumble]

Thankfully he is still on Mt. Rushmore.

[Brett Bellmore]

That reminds me, I really need to take the family to see Mt. Rushmore before it gets bombed. I barely got the Georgia Guidestones in a week before their destruction.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Who do you expect to bomb Mt. Rushmore? What's the chance the QAnon-level conservative hayseeds who bombed the the Georgia Guidestones (because Jesus) could make it to the Dakotas in their 23-year-old pickup trucks and salvaged '80s-era postal vans?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Teddy Roosevelt was a racist.

And a Republican (a Republican before Republicans strenuously embraced racism).

Other than that, great comment!

[The Margrave of Azilia]

They both sound racist to me.

Of course, racism was all the rage at the time. Unlike today, when the very idea of drawing distinctions based on color or ancestry is repugnant to everyone.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"Just so long as he has a moustache he's qualified for the Supreme Court. Of course, I'm not so sure about Day's moustache, it makes him look kind of creepy, but a moustache is a moustache. Bully!"

[F.D. Wolf]

Justice Moody, appointed in 1906, served only four years on the Court. By 1908, he was suffering from severe arthritis. In May 1909, he took a leave of absence, but never returned to his duties. In 1910, President Taft convinced Moody to step down. Moody was only 55 years old, so would not have been entitled to a pension, but Congress passed a special act allowing him to retire with a pension. Moody's disease worsened, and eventually he was unable to move his arms and legs. He passed away in 1917.

(One notices this recurring theme in the history of the federal judiciary: judges, physically or mentally unable to attend to their duties unwilling to leave their guaranteed lifetime employment for financial reasons, and Congress passing a special law allowing (or encouraging) them to do so.)

[F.D. Wolf]

The late Fuller Court (1888-1910) was so addled by aged and infirm justices, that from the period of December 1909 to December 1910, President Taft filled five vacancies on the Court. In 1912, Taft got a sixth appointment. Despite serving only a single four-year term as President, Taft's six Supreme Court appointments rank him third behind only President Washington (11) and President Franklin Roosevelt (9).

[Syd Henderson]

There was a late 19th century Justice (Ward Hunt) who had a stroke but hung on for several years to qualify for a pension. Congress got him to retire by doing what they did for Moody.

Day, by the by, was the Justice who got the seat Roosevelt first offered to Taft.

[Dan Schiavetta]

He did invite Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House (and was naively surprised at the uproar it caused). I wonder if they discussed voting?

[F.D. Wolf]

Roosevelt's history with race is complicated (though certainly stellar compared to that of his successor, the virulently racist Woodrow Wilson). Roosevelt was an early adherent of the new Progressivism, a movement steeped in scientific racism and the ideas of such men as Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. He believed in the "White Man's Burden", the duty of whites to uplift "lesser-evolved" races. (Frankly, today's affluent liberal whites aren't much different, believing "people of color" are perpetual victims who will never succeed without their enlightened assistance).

The NAACP, formed in 1908, endorsed Roosevelt in his unsuccessful 1912 Progressive presidential campaign and wrote, in its official newsletter The Crisis, a glowing eulogy of him after his death in 1930. W.E.B. DuBois, an early supporter-turned-critic of Roosevelt, warmed to him again after the former President issued a severe condemnation of the East St. Louis race riot of 1917, in which whites had violently attacked a black neighborhood, resulting in the deaths of 39 blacks (though some estimates say as many as 200). Roosevelt condemned those that would minimize “the brutal infamies imposed on colored people.”
In November 2018, DuBois would introduce Roosevelt at Roosevelt's last public speech, delivered before the Circle for Negro War Relief in New York City.

Roosevelt was a man of his times, and it is always a mistake to judge historical figures by the standards of the present day.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I wonder if they discussed immigration?

"To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted, I would repeat what I have said to my own race: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your fireside. Cast down your bucket among these people who have without strikes and labor wars tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, just to make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South."

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/88/

[Mr. Bumble]

Tried your link and got a "bad gateway" message.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

My apologies, you'd think a university would maintain it Web site better.

[Mr. Bumble]

Not in today's world. They are as incompetent as so many others and more concerned with diversity.

[David Nieporent]

Taft was his successor.

[F.D. Wolf]

*TR died in 1919, not 1930.

[F.D. Wolf]

"Successor" need not mean "immediate successor".

[Syd Henderson]

Someone got him confused with Taft, who did die in 1930 (and was between TR and Wilson).