Prologue Mr. Taft Takes Charge; Part I: Constructing the Taft Court: Appointments; 1. John Hessin Clarke and George Sutherland; 2. William Rufus Day and Pierce Butler; 3. Mahlon Pitney and Edward Terry Sanford; 4. Joseph McKenna and Harlan Fiske Stone; Part II: The Holdover Justices; 5. Oliver Wendell Holmes; 6. Willis Van Devanter; 7. James Clark McReynolds; 8. Louis Dembitz Brandeis; Part III: The Incomparable Chief Justiceship of William Howard Taft; 9. Taft's Health; 10. Taft as a Justice; 11. Myers v. United States; 12.The Conference of Senior Circuit Court Judges; 13. Reshaping the Supreme Court; 14. The Changing Role of Chief Justice; 15. The Chief Justice as Chancellor; 16. Lobbying for Judicial Appointments; 17. Creating a New Supreme Court Building; Part IV: The Taft Court as an Institution; 18. Judicial Opinions during the Taft Court; 19. Dissent during the Taft Court; 20. The Authority of the Taft Court; Part V: Social and Economic Legislation; 21. 'Everything Is on Edge': World War I and the American State; 22. Cabining the Constitutional Implications of the War; 23. Diminishing Judicial Deference; 24. Adkins v. Children's Hospital; 25. Price Fixing and Property Affected with a Public Interest; 26. The Protected Realm of Freedom; 27. Ratemaking and Judicial Legitimacy; Part VI: The Positive Law of Prohibition; 28. Prohibition, the Taft Court, and the Authority of Law; 29. Prohibition and Dual Sovereignty; 30. Prohibition and Normative Dualism; 31. Prohibition and Positive Law; 32. Prohibition and Law Enforcement; 33. Olmstead v. United States; Part VII: Federalism and the American People; 34. Federalism and World War I; 35. Dual Sovereignty and Intergovernmental Tax Immunities; 36. Normative Dualism and Congressional Power; 37. The Dormant Commerce Clause and the National Market; 38. National Judicial Power and the American People; Part VIII: Labor, Equal Protection, and Race; 39. Labor and the Jurisprudence of Individualism; 40. Labor and the Construction of the National Market; 41. Government by Injunction; 42. Truax v. Corrigan; 43. The Equal Protection Clause and Race; Epilogue Chief Justice Taft Exits the Scene.
The definitive account of the Supreme Court during William Howard Taft's tenure as Chief Justice.
Robert C. Post is the Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He served as the sixteenth Dean of Yale Law School from 2009 to 2017. He specializes in constitutional law, with particular emphasis on the First Amendment. His book For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom (with Matthew W. Finkin) has become the standard reference text for the meaning of academic freedom in the United States.
'A tour de force! Robert Post has produced an extraordinary
account of the final decade of pre-New Deal constitutionalism and
the birth of the modern Supreme Court. The Taft Court sets the
stage and introduces its characters in a manner that would make an
epic novelist envious. Post satisfies the most fastidious reader's
desire for an encyclopedic treatment and comprehensive
documentation while also ensuring that the unfolding of the story
is compelling and eminently readable. And why should it not be
compelling? Post reconstructs a period that has tremendous
relevance for our time, with new conservative majorities working to
expand the Court's power to better act as a conservative bulwark,
the intrusion of justices into high-stakes national politics, and
deeply divisive competing visions within the Court on the
fundamentals of constitutionalism and the nature of American
democracy.' Howard Gillman, Chancellor, University of California,
Irvine
'In his expansive examination of the Taft Court, Robert Post
describes the Chief Justice and former President as a man of
immense capacity and prodigious energy. The same could be said of
Post in this, the latest volume of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise
History of the Supreme Court. Post's crystalline prose and probing
intellect paint a nuanced picture of both this transformative chief
justice and the transformative decade of the 1920s. As rich in
biography and culture as it is sophisticated in legal analysis, The
Taft Court effortlessly guides the reader across the broad and
complex terrain of the Court's cases and their relationship to the
social, political, and economic developments of their day. This is
a master work by a master legal scholar and historian at his very
best.' Risa Goluboff, Dean of the University of Virginia School of
Law, and author of Vagrant Nation: Police Power, Constitutional
Change, and the Making of the 1960s
'Robert Post's long-awaited history of the Taft Court is a
masterpiece - a work for the ages. It is infused with great
humanity, enriched by astonishing erudition, and marked throughout
by a high philosophical intelligence that never loses sight of the
great questions and deep tensions of this remarkable period in
American life. Post's graceful pen brings it all alive: the issues
of the day, the personalities of the justices, and the dramatic
sweep of constitutional law at a fundamental turning point in the
American adventure. To have told the story with such intellectual
rigor and human warmth is an achievement of which I stand in awe.'
Anthony Kronman, Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School
'A stupendous scholarly achievement, and a miraculous recreation of
the mind of the Court as it stood on the brink of a revolution in
governance: the New Deal. Robert Post breaks down, with his
characteristic rigor and clarity, the jurisprudence that gave us
decisions like Ozawa, Adkins v. Children's Hospital, Gitlow, and
Olmstead. But he also takes us behind the scenes. We listen in on
the justices' conferences, follow the circulation of memos and
draft opinions, and read the private correspondence. The result is
a fully three-dimensional rendering of a Court whose ambivalence
and uncertainties have lessons for today - perhaps most
importantly, in its struggles to preserve the independence and
authority of the institution itself.' Louis Menand, author of the
Pulitzer Prize winning The Metaphysical Club
'As public attention scrutiny questions the work and very
legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court, Robert Post's magisterial
book arrives with grace and clarity, shedding welcome light on the
Court of a century ago, immersed then as now in contested politics
and distinctive personalities. The Taft Court lays bare the
contests over tradition and change and over property rights versus
equality and democracy even while demonstrating how temporary and
contingent are claimed eternal truths about legal methods and
meanings. Between the period of 1921–1930, 'conservatives' and
'progressives' grappled with disputes over labor protests,
race-based exclusions, and the hi-jacking of government away from
the views of many by evangelical beliefs (banning intoxicating
liquor). Offering thematic and biographical insights as well as
comparisons with earlier and later periods, this book makes vivid
forgotten fights and decisions while showing how the Taft Court set
in motion powerful practices and the majestic Courthouse itself.'
Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor, Harvard
University
'In his monumental study of the Taft Court, Yale law professor and
former dean Robert Post offers a truly mind-blowing analysis of a
critical moment in Supreme Court history. Addressing such issues as
the profound impact of World War I, the Taft Court's dramatic
expansion of the freedom of contract leading to the invalidation of
all sorts of laws designed to protect workers and labor unions, its
reluctance to protect the rights of persons accused of crime, and
its unwillingness to challenge Southern apartheid, the Taft Court
was arguably the most conservative Supreme Court until now. Post
does a brilliant job of analyzing, explaining, and illuminating
this critical period in our nation's constitutional history.'
Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Professor of Law,
The University of Chicago
'Rich with close readings of cases that rely on sources scarcely
ever used before - including docket books only recently discovered
in a locked trunk - and benefitting from deep and fruitful
quantitative analysis absent in most studies of the Court, The Taft
Court restores the nineteen-twenties as a turning point in the
Court's history...' Jill Lepore, The New Yorker
'… Robert Post offers a masterclass of legal analysis and
historical scholarship. Admirers of Post's scholarship will find in
this book yet more evidence of his rare skill for illuminating the
nuances of legal doctrine and identifying the social forces and
ideas that explain and animate that doctrine. 'The Taft Court' also
gives Post an opportunity to demonstrate his equally admirable
skill at synthesizing massive amounts of research material into an
engaging and compelling historical narrative - no small an
achievement for a volume that comes in at over 1500 pages.'
Christopher W. Schmidt, Jotwell
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