Author: Peter G. Renstrom Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 1851095373 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 350
Book Description
An authoritative survey of the Taft Court, which served from 1921 to 1929, and the impact it had on the U.S. legal system, social order, economics, and politics. William Howard Taft's experience in the executive branch gave him a unique perspective on the court's work. He initiated judicial reform and was the prime mover behind the Judiciary Act of 1925, which gave the court wide latitude to accept cases based on their importance to the nation. The Taft Court decided about 1,600 cases during its nine terms. This book examines the "aggregate" personality of the court through discussions of individual voting characteristics, bloc alignments, and other patterned behavior. It also charts the strengths and weaknesses of the rulings and demonstrates Taft's penchant for increasing the impact of decisions by pursuing consensus among the justices, two of whom were his own appointees when he served as president.
Author: Robert Post Publisher: ISBN: 9781009336215 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
The Taft Court offers the definitive history of the Supreme Court from 1921 to 1930 when William Howard Taft was Chief Justice. Using untapped archival material, Robert C. Post engagingly recounts the ambivalent effort to create a modern American administrative state out of the institutional innovations of World War I. He shows how the Court sought to establish authoritative forms of constitutional interpretation despite the culture wars that enveloped prohibition and pervasive labor unrest. He explores in great detail how constitutional law responds to altered circumstances. The work provides comprehensive portraits of seminal figures such as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Louis Dembitz Brandeis. It describes William Howard Taft's many judicial reforms and his profound alteration of the role of Chief Justice. A critical and timely contribution, The Taft Court sheds light on jurisprudential debates that are just as relevant today as they were a century ago.
Author: Jonathan Lurie Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press ISBN: 1611179882 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 297
Book Description
A study of the Supreme Court tenure of the only US president to serve as chief justice provides a unique perspective on 1920s America. In this book, Jonathan Lurie offers a comprehensive examination of the Supreme Court tenure of the only person to have held the offices of president of the United States and chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. William Howard Taft joined the Court during the Jazz Age and the era of prohibition, a period of disillusion and retreat from the idealism reflected during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. Lurie considers how conservative trends at this time were reflected in key decisions of Taft’s court. Although Taft was considered an undistinguished chief executive, such a characterization cannot be applied to his tenure as chief justice. Lurie demonstrates that Taft’s leadership on this tribunal, matched by his productive relations with Congress, in effect created the modern Supreme Court. Furthermore he draws on the unpublished letters Taft wrote to his three children, Robert, Helen, and Charles, generally once a week. His missives contain an intriguing mixture of family news, insights concerning contemporaneous political issues, and occasional commentary on his fellow justices and cases under consideration. Lurie structures his study in parallel with the eight full terms in which Taft occupied the center seat, examining key decisions while avoiding legal jargon wherever possible. The high point of Taft’s chief justiceship was the period from 1921 to 1925. The second part of his tenure was marked by slow decline as his health worsened with each passing year. By 1930 he was forced to resign, and his death soon followed. In an epilogue Lurie explains why Taft is still regarded as an outstanding chief justice—if not a great jurist—and why this distinction is important. “Conflicts from the early twentieth century endure, and Lurie gives us old and new perspectives from which to understand a living Constitution.” —Journal of American History
Author: Robert C. Post Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1009336223 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 1672
Book Description
This work will serve as the authoritative reference text on the Supreme Court during the period of 1921 to 1930, when William Howard Taft was Chief Justice. It will become a point of common reference across multiple disciplines, including history, law, and political science.
Author: Lewis L. Gould Publisher: University Press of Kansas ISBN: 070062001X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 214
Book Description
As our 27th president from 1909 to 1913, and then as chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1921 to 1930, William Howard Taft was the only man ever to lead two of America’s three governing branches. But between these two well-documented periods in office, there lies an eight-year patch of largely unexplored political wilderness. It was during this time, after all, that Taft somehow managed to rise from his ignominious defeat by both Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election to achieve his lifelong goal of becoming chief justice. In the first in-depth look at this period in Taft’s singular career, eminent presidential historian Lewis L. Gould reveals how a man often derided for his lack of political acumen made his way through the hazards of Republican affairs to gain his objective. In the years between the presidency and the Supreme Court Taft was, as one commentator observed, “the greatest of globe trotters for humanity.” Gould tracks him as he crisscrosses the country from 1913 through the summer of 1921, the inveterate traveler reinventing himself as an elder Republican statesman with no visible political ambition beyond informing and serving the public. Taft was, however, working the long game, serving on the National War Labor Board, fighting for the League of Nations, teaching law and constitutional history at Yale, making up his differences with Roosevelt, all while negotiating the Republican Party’s antipathy and his own intense dislike of Woodrow Wilson, whose wartime policies and battle for the league he was bound to support. Throughout, his judicial ambition shaped his actions, with surprising adroitness. This account of Taft’s journey from the White House to the Supreme Court fills a large gap in our understanding of an important American politician and jurist. It also discloses how intricate and complicated public affairs had become during the era of World War I and its aftermath, an era in which William Howard Taft, as a shrewd commentator on the political scene, a resourceful practitioner of party politics, and a man of consummate ambition, made a significant and lasting mark.
Author: Jeffrey Rosen Publisher: Times Books ISBN: 1250293693 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
The only man to serve as president and chief justice, who approached every decision in constitutional terms, defending the Founders’ vision against new populist threats to American democracy William Howard Taft never wanted to be president and yearned instead to serve as chief justice of the United States. But despite his ambivalence about politics, the former federal judge found success in the executive branch as governor of the Philippines and secretary of war, and he won a resounding victory in the presidential election of 1908 as Theodore Roosevelt’s handpicked successor. In this provocative assessment, Jeffrey Rosen reveals Taft’s crucial role in shaping how America balances populism against the rule of law. Taft approached each decision as president by asking whether it comported with the Constitution, seeking to put Roosevelt’s activist executive orders on firm legal grounds. But unlike Roosevelt, who thought the president could do anything the Constitution didn’t forbid, Taft insisted he could do only what the Constitution explicitly allowed. This led to a dramatic breach with Roosevelt in the historic election of 1912, which Taft viewed as a crusade to defend the Constitution against the demagogic populism of Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Nine years later, Taft achieved his lifelong dream when President Warren Harding appointed him chief justice, and during his years on the Court he promoted consensus among the justices and transformed the judiciary into a modern, fully equal branch. Though he had chafed in the White House as a judicial president, he thrived as a presidential chief justice.
Author: Randy E. Barnett Publisher: Aspen Publishing ISBN: Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 473
Book Description
An Introduction to Constitutional Law teaches the narrative of constitutional law as it has developed historically and provides the essential background to understand how this foundational body of law has come to be what it is today. This multimedia experience combines a book and video series to engage students more directly in the study of constitutional law. All students—even those unfamiliar with American history—will garner a firm understanding of how constitutional law has evolved. An eleven-hour online video library brings the Supreme Court’s most important decisions to life. Videos are enriched by photographs, maps, and audio from the Supreme Court. The book and videos are accessible for all levels: law school, college, high school, home school, and independent study. Students can read and watch these materials before class to prepare for lectures or study after class to fill in any gaps in their notes. And, come exam time, students can binge-watch the entire canon of constitutional law in about twelve hours.
Author: Peter Charles Hoffer Publisher: ISBN: Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 512
Book Description
For more than two centuries, the U.S. Supreme Court has provided a battleground for nearly every controversial issue in our nations history. This veteran team of talented historians produces the most readable, astute, and up-to-date single-volume history of this venerated institution.
Author: Peter G. Renstrom
Author: Robert Post
Author: Jonathan Lurie
Author: Robert C. Post
Author: Lewis L. Gould
Author: Jeffrey Rosen
Author: United States. Supreme Court
Author: Alpheus Thomas Mason
Author: Randy E. Barnett
Author: Peter Charles Hoffer