Today in Supreme Court History: August 2, 1923

8/2/1923: President Calvin Coolidge's Inauguration. He would appoint Justice Harlan Fiske Stone to the Supreme Court.

President Calvin Coolidge

 

Comments

[JoeFromtheBronx]

West v. Barnes was the first Supreme Court decision.

The case was of some note. The dispute involved the use of paper currency instead of gold and silver to pay for a farm mortgage. So, it had some constitutional implications.

The case, argued on 8/2/1791 (a decision handed down the next day), ultimately turned on a procedural point. West, by federal law, had to have a writ signed within ten days by a Supreme Court clerk.

The clerk was in Philadelphia, and the West was in Rhode Island. It would be far from easy to make the trip on time in those days. But the law was the law.

West lost on the procedural ground, but Congress soon changed the law to address the problem. The decision did not end matters, which lingered on until after his death. His heir lost West v. Randall (1820), an important precedent in class actions.

==

President Harding died on 8/2/1923, but Coolidge was not sworn in (by his father) until early morning the next day.

https://www.inaugural.senate.gov/swearing-in-of-coolidge/

[F.D. Wolf]

Harlan Stone was serving as Attorney General when President Coolidge appointed him to the Court in 1925. Chief Justice Taft had lobbied Coolidge to appoint Stone to the Court, an endorsement he would soon come to regret.

In April 1929, Taft wrote his son Charles:

Hoover's attachment for Stone is very great... I have no doubt that if I were to retire or die, the President would appoint Stone as head of the court. I think in doing so, he would make a great mistake, for the reason that Stone is not a leader... He is a learned lawyer in many ways, but his judgments I do not altogether consider safe.(1)

A few months later, Taft wrote his brother Horace:

I am older and slower and less acute and more confused. However, as long as things continue as they are, and I can answer in my place, I must stay on the court to prevent the Bolsheviki from getting control... the only hope we have of a consistent declaration of constitutional law is to live as long as we can... The truth is that Hoover is a Progressive just as Stone is, and just as Brandeis is and just as Holmes is.(2)

Taft would eventually step down from the Court on February 3, 1930, after receiving assurances from Hoover that he would appoint former Justice Charles Evans Hughes, rather than Stone, to succeed him. Taft would die on March 8, a little more than a month after stepping down from the Court. Stone would, of course, become Chief eleven years later when President Franklin Roosevelt would appoint him to the position.

1. Henry F. Pringle, 2 The Life and Times of William Howard Taft 1044 (1939).

2. Id. at 967.

[Syd Henderson]

Hughes was a progressive as well, although I guess not a potential Bolshevik. Taft also appointed Hughes to the Court as associate justice, so two of his appointments went on to be Chief Justice. I also think Taft was correct; Hughes was a much better appointment.