Today in Supreme Court History: February 15, 1790

2/15/1790: Justice John Rutledge takes oath.

Justice John Rutledge

 

Comments

[The Margrave of Azilia]

After Rutledge served as Associate Justice, he took a break where he was a South Carolina state judge. Then President Washington gave him a recess appointment as Chief Justice. The Senate rejected the nomination after Rutledge denounced the Jay Treaty.

Then he tried to drown himself, only to be fished out of the water by some enslaved Black people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rutledge

I think there's some tension, to put it mildly, between the recess-appointment clause and federal judges' good-behavior tenure.

[Syd Henderson]

He is still the only recess appointment to the Supreme Court not to be confirmed. There have been more recess appointments than I realized. Eisenhower made three: Earl Warren, Walter Brennan and Potter Stewart, all of whom, of course, were easily confirmed when it came time. Stewart was the most recent. Most of the recess appointments were quickly confirmed.

I'm curious: was Rutledge the only Chief Justice nominee to be rejected by the Senate or Judiciary Committee? I'm not counting William Cushing, who declined the appointment after being confirmed by the Senate.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Kind of.

President Grant withdrew the nomination of George Henry Williams in 1873, after the nomination ran into problems in the Senate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Henry_Williams

Abe Fortas was nominated for Chief Justice in 1968 but the nomination was filibustered to death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abe_Fortas