Charles
Evans Hughes was
born
in Glens Falls, New York on 11th April, 1862. After graduating from
Brown University (1881) and Columbia University (1884) he was admitted
to the bar and practiced in New York City.
A member of the Republican Party,
Hughes was elected governor of New York in 1907.
In 1910 President William
Taft appointed Hughes
as a member of the Supreme
Court. However he resigned
in 1916 when he became the Republican
Party candidate for
the presidency. In the election he received 8,538,221 votes but was
beaten by the Democratic Party candidate,
Woodrow Wilson (9,129,606).
When the Republican
Party regained power
Hughes served as Secretary of State under Warren
Harding (1921-1923) and Calvin Coolidge
(1923-1929). He was also
a judge at the Permanent
Court of International Justice (1928-1930).
and wrote The Supreme
Court of the United States (1928).
In 1930 President Herbert
Hoover appointed Hughes
as chief justice of the Supreme Court.
After Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic
Party candidate, was elected as president in 1932, Hughes was
seen as the leader of the court's opposition to some of the proposed
New Deal legislation. This included
the ruling against the National
Recovery Administration (NRA),
the Agricultural
Adjustment Act
(AAA) and ten other New Deal laws.
On 2nd February, 1937, Franklin
D. Roosevelt made a
speech attacking the Supreme
Court for its actions
over New
Deal legislation. He
pointed out that seven of the nine judges (Hughes,
Willis
Van Devanter, George Sutherland,
Harlan
Stone, Owen Roberts, Benjamin
Cardozo and
Pierce Butler)
had been appointed by Republican
presidents. Roosevelt had just won re-election by 10,000,000 votes
and resented the fact that the justices could veto legislation that
clearly had the support of the vast majority of the public.
Roosevelt suggested that the age was a major problem as six of the
judges were over 70 (Hughes,
Willis
Van Devanter, James McReynolds,
Louis Brandeis, George
Sutherland and Pierce Butler). Roosevelt
announced that he was going to ask Congress to pass a bill enabling
the president to expand the Supreme
Court
by adding one new judge, up to a maximum off six, for every current
judge over the age of 70.
Hughes realised that Roosevelt's Court Reorganization
Bill would result in the Supreme Court
coming under the control of the Democratic
Party. His first move was to arrange for a letter written by him
to be published by Burton
K. Wheeler, chairman of the Judiciary
Committee. In the letter Hughes cogently refuted all the claims made
by Franklin D. Roosevelt.
However, behind the scenes Hughes was busy doing deals to make sure
that Roosevelt's bill would be defeated in Congress. On 29th March,
Owen Roberts announced that he had changed
his mind about voting against minimum wage legislation. Hughes also
reversed his opinion on the Social Security
Act and the National Labour Relations Act
(NLRA) and by a 5-4 vote they were now declared to be constitutional.
Then Willis Van Devanter, probably the
most conservative of the justices, announced his intention to resign.
He was replaced by Hugo Black, a member
of the Democratic Party and a strong
supporter of the New Deal. In July,
1937, Congress defeated the Court Reorganization Bill by 70-20. However,
Roosevelt had the satisfaction of knowing he had a Supreme
Court that was now less likely to block his legislation.
Hughes, who retired from the Supreme
Court in 1941, published
several books including Foreign
Relations (1924), The
Pathway of Peace (1925), The
Supreme Court of the United States
(1928) and Pan-American
Peace Plans (1929). Charles
Evans Hughes died
in Osterville, Massachusetts, on 27th August, 1948.
Leslie Illingworth,
Punch Magazine (1937)
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
