Morrison Waite

From New World Encyclopedia


Morrison Remick Waite
Morrison Waite


7th Chief Justice of the United States
In office
March 4, 1874 – March 23, 1888
Nominated by Ulysses S. Grant
Preceded by Salmon P. Chase
Succeeded by Melville Fuller

Born November 29 1816(1816-11-29)
Lyme, Connecticut
Died March 23 1888 (aged 71)
Washington, DC
Religion Episcopalian

Morrison Remick Waite, nicknamed "Mott" (November 29, 1816 – March 23, 1888) was the Chief Justice of the United States from 1874 to 1888. Born in Connecticut, Waite attended Yale. After graduation, he moved to Ohio, where he was admitted to the bar in 1839, and in 1850 became recognized as a leader of the state bar. In 1849–1850, he was a Republican member of the Ohio Senate. Waite was a firm opponent of slavery. However as Chief Justice, he ruled that blacks did not have a federal right of suffrage, because, "the right to vote comes from the states."

It was Waite's belief that, after the Reconstruction Era in which northern values were forcibly imposed on the South, white moderates should set the rules of southern racial relations. In the cases that grew out of the American Civil War and Reconstruction, Waite was sympathetic to the tendency of the court to restore states' rights and, in effect, to weaken the power of the Fifteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

In 1876 when there was talk about a third term for President Grant, some Republicans turned to Waite who they preferred as a candidate over Grant. However, Waite turned down the offer, preferring to remain chief justice, a position he held until his death in 1888.

Early life and career

Waite was born at Lyme, Connecticut, the son of Henry Matson Waite, a judge of the Superior Court, associate judge of the Supreme Court of Connecticut, and its chief justice from 1854 to 1857.

Waite graduated from Yale University where he was classmate with the future Democratic presidential nominee, Samuel J. Tilden. There he became a member of the Skull and Bones Society in 1837 and soon after graduating, moved to Maumee, Ohio, where he studied law in the office of Samuel L. Young and was admitted to the bar in 1839. He served one term as mayor of Maumee.

Waite married Amelia Warner in 1840 and had three sons with her—Henry Seldon, Christopher Champlin, Edward T.—and one daughter, Mary F.

In 1850, he moved to Toledo and soon came to be recognized as a leader of the state bar. In politics, he was first a Whig and later a Republican. From 1849 to 1850, he was a member of the Ohio Senate.

Before the Civil War, Waite opposed both slavery and the southern slave states' withdrawal from the Union. In 1871, with William M. Evarts and Caleb Cushing, Waite represented the United States as counsel before the Alabama Tribunal at Geneva. In 1874, he presided over the Ohio constitutional convention.

In the same year, Waite was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant to succeed Judge Salmon P. Chase as Chief Justice of the United States, and he held this position until his death in 1888. President Grant had offered the Chief Justiceship to, among others, Senator Roscoe Conkling and Democrat Caleb Cushing before he settled on Waite, who learned of his nomination by a telegram.

The nomination was not well-received. Former Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles remarked of the nomination that "It is a wonder that Grant did not pick up some old acquaintance, who was a stage driver or bartender, for the place," and the political journal The Nation said "Mr. Waite stands in the front-rank of second-rank lawyers."

The Waite Court, 1874–1888

In the cases that grew out of the American Civil War and Reconstruction—and especially in those that involved the interpretation of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments—Waite sympathized with the general tendency of the court to restrict the further extension of the powers of the Federal government.

In a notable ruling in United States v. Cruikshank, he struck down the Enforcement Act, ruling that, "Sovereignty... rests alone with the States. It is no more the duty or within the power of the United States to punish for a conspiracy to falsely imprison or murder within a State, than it would be to punish for false imprisonment or murder itself." He also stated that the Fifteenth Amendment could not confer the right to vote to blacks, because “the right to vote comes from the states.

His belief was that white moderates—not emancipated blacks or northern "Capetbaggers"—should set the rules of racial relations in the South, which reflected the majority of the Court and the people of the United States, who were tired of the bitter racial strife involved with the affairs of Reconstruction. This decision practically overturned the Fourteenth Amendment. However, instead of strengthening the hands of moderates, the ruling enabled arch-segregationists to regain power and legislate the infamous Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised African-Americans in the South.

Waite's opinion of Munn v. Illinois (1877) was one of a group of six Granger cases involving Populist-inspired state legislation to fix maximum rates chargeable by grain elevators and railroads. Of it he wrote, that when a business or private property was "affected with a public interest," it was subject to governmental regulation. Thus, he was ruling against charges that Granger laws constituted encroachment of private property without due process of law and conflicted with the Fourteenth Amendment. Later, the ardent New Dealers in the Franklin Roosevelt administration looked to Munn v. Illinois to guide them in matters like due process, commerce, and contract clauses .

Among his own most important decisions were those in the Enforcement Act Cases (1875), the Sinking Fund Cases (1878), the Railroad Commission Cases (1886), and the Telephone Cases (1887).

Waite concurred with the majority in the Head Money Cases (1884), the Ku-Klux Case (United States v. Harris, 1883), the Civil Rights Cases (1883), Pace v. Alabama (1883), and the Legal Tender Cases, including Juillard v. Greenman (1883). Reynolds v. United States (1878) was a landark case that found against a religious defense in certain legal cases.

Ku Klux Case

United States v. Harris (1883), sometimes referred to as the Ku Klux Case, was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to penalize crimes such as assault and murder. It declared that the local governments have the power to penalize these crimes. The fact that many of these crimes were racially motivated in the south was ignored.

In the specific case, four men were removed from a Crockett County, Tennessee jail by a group led by Sheriff R. G. Harris and 19 others. The four men were beaten and one was killed. A deputy sheriff tried to prevent the act, but failed. Section 2 of the Force Act of 1871 was declared unconstitutional on the theory that an Act to enforce the Equal Protection Clause applied only to state action, not to state inaction.

Civil Rights Cases

The Civil Rights Cases (1883), were a group of five similar cases consolidated into one issue for the United States Supreme Court to review. The decision held that Congress lacked the constitutional authority under the enforcement provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals and organizations, rather than state and local governments.

More particularly, the Court held that the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which provided that "all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude" was unconstitutional.

Pace v. Alabama

In Pace v. Alabama (1983), the plaintiff, Tony Pace, an African-American man, and Mary Cox, a white woman, were residents of the state of Alabama, who had been arrested in 1881 because their sexual relationship violated the state's anti-miscegenation statute. They were charged with living together "in a state of adultery and fornication" and both sentenced to two years imprisonment in the state penitentiary in 1882. Because miscegenation, that is, marriage, cohabitation, and sexual relations between whites and "negroes," was prohibited by Alabama's anti-miscegenation statute (Ala. code 1489), it would have been illegal for the couple to marry in Alabama. Because of the criminalization of interracial relationships, they were penalized for their extramarital relationship more severely than a white or a black couple would have been.

Little is known about Pace and Cox. In Alabama, they were charged with "adultery or fornication," not with marriage or attempted marriage. Both Pace and Cox appealed their conviction. They both claimed the anti-miscegenation statute violated the United States Consitutution. On appeal, the Alabama Supreme Court affirmed their conviction, ruling that the statue did not violate the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it did not constitute discrimination for or against either race to prohibit interracial sexual relations.

While focusing on the crime of "adultery and fornication" and not mentioning the state statute's prohibition of interracial marriage directly, the court did go on to condemn all sexual relations between whites and blacks, whether extramarital or marital, because of the interracial offspring in which they could result: "The evil tendency of the crime [of adultery or fornication] is greater when commited between persons of the two races ... Its result may be the amalgamation of the two races, producing a mongrel population and a degraded civilization, the prevention of which is dictated by a sound policy affecting the highest interests of society and government." (Pace & Cox v. State, 69 Ala 231, 233 (1882)

Reynolds v. United States

Reynolds v. United States (1878) was a Supreme Court of the United States case which held, according to an opinion written by Chief Justice Waite, that religious duty was not a suitable defense to a criminal indictment. George Reynolds was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, charged with bigamy after marrying Amelia Jane Schofield while still married to Mary Ann Tuddenham in the Utah Territory.

Before the Supreme Court, Reynolds argued that his conviction for bigamy should be overturned on six issues. These included that his grand jury had not been legal, that challenges of certain jurors were improperly overruled, testimony bye Schofield was not permissible as it was under another indictment, and most importantly that it was his religious duty to marry multiple times.

Reynolds was indicted in the District Court for the 3rd Judicial District of the Territory of Utah under sect. 5352 of the Revised Statutes, which stated:

'Every person having a husband or wife living, who marries another, whether married or single, in a Territory, or other place over which the United States have exclusive jurisdiction, is guilty of bigamy, and shall be punished by a fine of not more than $500, and by imprisonment for a term of not more than five years.'

After being found guilty by the lower court, Reynolds appealed to the Supreme Court of the Utah Territory, which upheld the conviction

Presidential run refused

In 1876 when there was talk about a third term for President Grant, some Republicans turned to Waite as they believed he was a better presidential nominee for the Republican Party than the scandal-tainted Grant. Waite turned down the idea, arguing "my duty was not to make it a stepping stone to someone else, but to preserve its purity and make my own name as honorable as that of any of my predecessors." In the aftermath of the presidential election of 1876, he refused to sit on the Electoral Commission that decided the electoral votes of Florida because of his close friendship of GOP presidential nominee Rutherford B. Hayes and his being a classmate at Yale with the Democratic presidential nominee Samuel J. Tilden. Waite served as chief justice for 14 years and died in Washington, D.C. on March 23, 1888, at the age of 71.

Legacy

Waite's legacy to constitutional law falls into three domains. His opinions were the first interpreting the Civil War Amendments. Second, his opinions guided state governments as they sought to address economic changes resulting from the industrial revolution. Finally, Waite's view of the judicial function guided thinking about judicial review well into the twentieth century.

Despite spending his entire career serving the legal rights of his fellow man, including being a firm opponent of slavery and a champion of the education of blacks in the South, some of Waite's court opinions empowering states' rights had the adverse effect of denying rights to the formerly enslaved.

As chief justice, Waite swore in Presidents Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, and Grover Cleveland.

Like his successor Melville Fuller, he is credited with being an efficient and capable administrator of the Court.

Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter said of him:

"He did not confine the constitution within the limits of his own experience...The disciplined and disinterested lawyer in him transcended the bounds of the environment within which he moved and the views of the client whom he served at the bar".

Waite was one of the Peabody Trustees of Southern Education, and was a vocal advocate to aiding schools for the education of blacks in the south.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Magrath, C. Peter. Morrison R. Waite: The Triumph of Character, Macmillan, 1963. ASIN B0006A4074
  • Rehnquist, William H. The Supreme Court, 2002. ISBN 978-0375708619
  • Stephenson, Donald, & Renstrom, Peter. The Waite Court: Justice, Rulings, and Legacy, ABC-CLIO, 2003. ISBN 978-1576078297
  • Trimble, Bruce R. Chief Justice Waite: Defender of the Public Interest, Russell & Russell, 1970. ASIN B000CTZRG

External links

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