The Taft Court continued the Lochner era and largely reflected the conservatism of the 1920s.[1] The Taft Court is also notable for being the first court able to exert some control over its own docket, as the Judiciary Act of 1925 instituted the requirement that almost all cases receive a writ of certiorari from four justices before appearing before the Supreme Court.[2]
Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co. (1922): In an 8–1 decision delivered by Justice Taft, the court struck down the 1919 Child Labor Tax Law, which Congress had passed to tax companies using child labor. The court held that the tax was not a true tax, but rather a regulation on businesses using child labor, and thus a violation of the Tenth Amendment which the court held was charged with such regulation.
Moore v. Dempsey (1923): In a 6-2 decision written by Justice Holmes, the court held that mob interference in a criminal trial violates due process, and that federal courts could protect against due process violations in trials held by state courts. It was the first Supreme Court case in the 20th century that protected the civil rights of African Americans in the South.[3]
Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925): In a unanimous decision written by Justice McReynolds, the court struck down the Oregon Compulsory Education Act, which had required children to attend only public schools; the law included several exceptions, and was mostly targeted at parochial schools. The court held that the law violated due process.
Lum v. Rice (1927): A unanimous opinion by Taft upheld a Mississippi school district's expulsion of a Chinese American student from a whites-only school on the grounds that Mississippi law did not consider Asians to be white, greatly expanding the scope of permissible racial discrimination in American schools until Brown v. Board of Education outlawed it 27 years later.
The Taft Court struck down numerous economic regulations in defense of a laissez-faire economy, but largely avoided striking down laws that affected civil liberties.[5] The court struck down both federal and state regulations, with the latter often being struck down on basis of the dormant commerce clause.[6] The court also tended to take the side of businesses over unions, rarely intervened to protect minorities, and generally issued conservative rulings with regard to criminal procedure.[7] During the preceding White Court, progressives came close to taking control of the court, but Harding's appointments shored up the conservative wing.[5] Holmes and Brandeis (and Clarke, before his retirement) formed the progressive wing of the court and were more willing to uphold government regulations. McReynolds, Van Devanter, and the Harding appointees (Taft, Sutherland, Butler, and Sanford) made up the conservative bloc and frequently voted to strike down progressive legislation such as child labor laws.[5] Van Devanter, Taft, Sutherland, Butler, and Sanford formed a cohesive quintet that often voted together, while McReynolds was more likely than the others to dissent from the right.[8] The departures of Pitney and Day left Joseph McKenna as the lone swing justice, though McKenna became more conservative as he neared retirement.[5] In 1925, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Attorney General Harlan F. Stone to replace McKenna, and Stone surprised many by aligning with Holmes and Brandeis.[9]
Referencesedit
^Renstrom, Peter (2003). The Taft Court: Justices, Rulings, and Legacy. ABC-CLIO. pp. 3–4. ISBN 9781576072806. Retrieved 4 March 2016.
^Galloway, Russell Wl Jr. (1 January 1985). "The Taft Court (1921-29)". Santa Clara Law Review. 25 (1): 21–22. Retrieved 4 March 2016.
^Post, Robert (2002). "FEDERALISM IN THE TAFT COURT ERA: CAN IT BE "REVIVED"?". Duke Law Journal. 51 (5): 1606–1608. doi:10.2307/1373157. JSTOR 1373157. Retrieved 4 March 2016.
Burton, David Henry (1998). Taft, Holmes, and the 1920s Court: An Appraisal. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 9780838637685.
Post, Robert (2023). The Taft Court: Making Law for a Divided Nation, 1921–1930. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781009336215.
Renstrom, Peter G. (2003). The Taft Court: Justices, Rulings, and Legacy. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781576072806.
Works centering on Taft Court judgesedit
Arkes, Hadley (1997). The Return of George Sutherland: Restoring a Jurisprudence of Natural Rights. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691016283.
Mason, Alpheus Thomas (January 1969). "President by Chance, Chief Justice by Choice". American Bar Association Journal. 55 (1): 35–39. JSTOR 25724643.
Rosen, Jeffrey (2016). Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300158670.
Rosen, Jeffrey (2018). William Howard Taft. Times Books. ISBN 9781250293695., brief popular biography
Slater, Stephanie L. (2018). Edward Terry Sanford: A Tennessean on the US Supreme Court. University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 9781621903697.
Urofsky, Melvin (2012). Louis D. Brandeis: A Life. Schocken Books. ISBN 9780805211955.
White, G. Edward (1995). Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198024330.
Other relevant worksedit
Abraham, Henry Julian (2008). Justices, Presidents, and Senators: A History of the U.S. Supreme Court Appointments from Washington to Bush II. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780742558953.
Anderson, Donald F. (Winter 2000). "Building National Consensus: The Career of William Howard Taft". University of Cincinnati Law Review. 68: 323–356.
Friedman, Leon; Israel, Fred L., eds. (1995). The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions. Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 0-7910-1377-4.
Hall, Kermit L.; Ely, James W. Jr.; Grossman, Joel B., eds. (2005). The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195176612.
Hall, Kermit L.; Ely, James W. Jr., eds. (2009). The Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195379396.
Hall, Timothy L. (2001). Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 9781438108179.
Hoffer, Peter Charles; Hoffer, WilliamJames Hull; Hull, N. E. H. (2018). The Supreme Court: An Essential History (2nd ed.). University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-2681-6.
Howard, John R. (1999). The Shifting Wind: The Supreme Court and Civil Rights from Reconstruction to Brown. SUNY Press. ISBN 9780791440896.
Irons, Peter (2006). A People's History of the Supreme Court: The Men and Women Whose Cases and Decisions Have Shaped Our Constitution (Revised ed.). Penguin. ISBN 9781101503133.
Lendler, Marc (2012). Gitlow v. New York: Every Idea an Incitement. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-1875-0.
Martin, Fenton S.; Goehlert, Robert U. (1990). The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography. Congressional Quarterly Books. ISBN 0-87187-554-3.
Schwarz, Bernard (1995). A History of the Supreme Court. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195093872.
Tomlins, Christopher, ed. (2005). The United States Supreme Court: The Pursuit of Justice. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0618329694.
Urofsky, Melvin I. (1994). The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary. Garland Publishing. ISBN 0-8153-1176-1.