Today in Supreme Court History: December 28, 1856

12/28/1856: President Woodrow Wilson's birthday. His administration would initiate the prosecutions under the Sedition Act that gave rise to Schenck v. U.S., Debs v. U.S., and Abrams v. U.S.

 

Comments

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Denzel Washington is 71 today. Happy Birthday!

He went to and played basketball at Fordham University, which is in the Bronx. At least one of its campuses is.

Washington played a reporter in The Pelican Brief, based on a John Grisham novel. The "brief" is related to the murder of two Supreme Court justices.

In the book (at least), one of the slain justices was a strong believer in the individual rights view of the Second Amendment.

But (spoiler) that isn't the reason he was killed.

[Frank Drackman]

Fordham, trying to remember who the “Fordham Flash” was (a little before my time)
Alumni include G Gordon Liddy

Frank

[AmosArch]

I picked up the book on a whim and right out the starting gate it was wedge politics and brave leftist/sinister far right tropes. I didn't want to waste any more time seeing if it got any better.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

There is an article in today's NYT on Thomas Goldstein, the SCOTUS advocate and SCOTUSblog co-founder, whose life took a turn.

The article references "ultra-stakes-gambling and sugar daddy relationships" before the paywall kicks in.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/magazine/thomas-goldstein-supreme-court-gambling.html

[Mark In Florida]

Pasting it into archive.is reveals the whole article.

[not guilty]

Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919), helped to establish First Amendment doctrine, but on the merits it is an execrable decision.

[John Mosby]

"In the book (at least), one of the slain justices was a strong believer in the individual rights view of the Second Amendment."

Must not have been that strong, or he woulda shot back! CC, JSM

[Frank Drackman]

WW (his friends called him “28”) great guy, Film Buff, screened “(the) Birth of a Nation” at the White House. Real “Progressive” he was.

Frank

[F.D. Wolf]

One of the foundational documents of the administrative state (and of Progressivism in general) is Woodrow Wilson's "The Study of Administration", first published in Political Science Quarterly in June 1887. It is freely available in various locations on the internet, but if you want a very brief summary: the workings of government have become much too complex to be entrusted to the elected choices of the great unwashed masses, so it must be placed in the hands of independent (i.e., unaccountable) experts who are above politics.

I think the COVID years will be retrospectively viewed as a turning point for the administrative state, in which people learned that the "non-partisan experts" of the administrative state were neither non-partisan nor particularly expert in anything,

If Woodrow Wilson might be considered the intellectual founder of the modern administrative state, then Franklin Roosevelt might be seen as the individual who put it into practice. I have always appreciated the irony that the two great Supreme Court cases concerning the president's removal power, Myers v. United States (1926) and Humphrey's Executor v. United States (1935), came to be because, respectively, Presidents Wilson and Roosevelt, the patron saints of the modern administrative state, asserted the power to fire individuals who had been given tenure protection by Congress.

[ReaderY]

Better non-partisan experts loyal to the country than dimwit lackeys whose only qualifications are willingness to do whatever The Man wants and good looks (and for women, large breasts).

While the American economy ahowed more economic resiliency in the 20th centrury than any in the world, China is probably the only strongman-led authoritarian regime that hasn’t been a dismal economic failure.

Hint: No getting rid of an administrative state with Trump Strongman-led regimes have reams of administrators poking their noses into your affairs for Big Brother’s benefit. They’re just incompetent unchecked by any lae, and there solely for the benefit of The Man, not you.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

No such thing as "non-partisan experts loyal to the country", other than in dreams and political speeches. They are bureaucrats, whose loyalty is to growing their fiefdom. The last thing they want to do is solve the problems that put them into office.

Those who start out as ideal young know-it-alls also start out as bureaucrats who know what's best for everybody, and the longer they stay in the job, the more their loyalty shifts to their jobs.

[F.D. Wolf]

The first Cabinet official removed by a President was Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, fired by President John Adams in May 1800. Pickering, a holdover from the Washington Administration, was unabashedly pro-British, and was actively and openly undermining Adams' efforts to end the Quasi-War with France. Adams asked Pickering to resign, but Pickering refused, so Adams fired him. But at least no one could accuse Pickering of being Adams' "lackey".

I subscribe to the quaint notion that officials of the executive department should pursue the policies of the elected Executive, not the policies they might prefer or think best, and if they are unable or unwilling to do so, then they should resign. The fact that so many seem incapable of this lays bare the lie that they are non-partisan.

I believe this even when I do not particularly care for the elected President or his policies. That is how representative democracy should work, the will of the people through their elected representatives, not the will of disgruntled bureaucrats who know better than the dumb voters who pay their salary.

[David Nieporent]

How about the equally quaint notion that the elected Executive should pursue the policies of Congress, not the policies he or she might think best, given that except in a few narrow areas enumerated in the Constitution, his role is to faithfully execute the law, not create it?

[JoeFromtheBronx]

I think the COVID years will be retrospectively viewed as a turning point for the administrative state, in which people learned that the "non-partisan experts" of the administrative state were neither non-partisan nor particularly expert in anything,

YMMV. But that won't surprise given the two people opining.

As to Myers, two Wilson nominees were among the dissenters. As to Humphrey’s Executor, FDR was also a strong executive who was dealing with the Great Depression.

In both cases, it is unsurprising that a strong executive who was quite sure of themselves asserted executive power. Self-denial for a wider principle (an administrative state) would be nice.

But it's far from surprising if they were not consistent. Or their use of power depended on their power base.

See, e.g., Jefferson when he became President or James Madison when he became a member of Congress and the opposition party.

[ReaderY]

While Woodrow Wilson believed in government by competent people, he also firmly believed that only white people are competent. He didn’t just segregate the federal government. He systematically fired black civil servants from administrative and diplomatic posts, and offered them jobs as things like cooks and janitors.