Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Charles Evans Hughes was born on April 11, 1862. He was the eleventh Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He was responsible for laying the cornerstone of the current Supreme Court building, in 1936.
He passed the bar with an unheard-of score of 99+1/2. He was the Governor of New York, and then President Taft nominated him as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. He quit that post in 1916 to campaign against Woodrow Wilson. He went to bed on Election Day thinking he was going to be the nation’s next President; it seems President Wilson retired the same night with the same thought. It was not to be.
He was appointed Secretary of State by President Harding. He served with distinction in that office into President Coolidge’s adminstration, and then retired to private life.
President Hoover nominated him for Chief Justice in 1930. When the Senate met to consider his confirmation, it was much more contentious than his elevation to Associate Justice in 1910. The Great Depression was in full swing by then, and the interests of The Poor were already stacked up against the interests of The Rich. Mr. Hughes was thought by the Democrats to be aligned with the second of those two, and they caused a lot of grief about this. Nevertheless, his commission was confirmed.
Years later into the first term of Franklin Roosevelt, the Supreme Court struck down the American Caesar. In Schechter Poultry Corp. vs. U.S. (1935), Hughes delivered the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court that Congress had unconstitutionally delegated legislative authority to the President.
The Court Packing Scandal of 1937 followed. Roosevelt, accustomed to being given whatever he requested from Congress, approached them demanding the authority to expand the Supreme Court. His court-packing plan was based on a big fat red-herring, that anyone on the Supreme Court over 70 years of age was a doddering old fool and needed an assistant lest the nation’s judicial business be clogged up by the gray-hairs. At the time of the court-packing plan, six Supreme Court justices achieved this level of maturity including Hughes. So FDR, embittered at finishing his first term without a single Supreme Court appointment, was demanding the authority to expand the Court to 15 seats.
He lost that battle. But he won the war.
The crisis was averted when Justice Willis Van Devanter changed his vote in the “Switch In Time That Saved Nine” case of 1937, the West Coast Hotels vs. Parrish decision. Van Devanter sided with the President…and Chief Justice Hughes…ruling that the executive branch had the authority to enforce a minimum wage. A Supreme Court decision made purely out of political expediency.
Hughes said at the time that Justice Van Devanter “saved the court.” He was probably right.
Chief Justice Hughes stands alone in history. He is both the savior of the delicate balance of powers in the American Republic…and it’s traitor. In fairness to him, however, it should be pointed out that this tiny civil war between 1935 and 1937 was all-important. It was an Alamo. We did lose a lot of our liberties by the time FDR came to dominate the judicial branch, but if we had lost those liberties in 1935 instead we would surely have lost a lot more of them.
How did he do as an officer of the court? Surely, he was less influential than Chief Justice John Marshall. However, interestingly, Charles E. Hughes was way out in front of the great Federalist when measured according to the attribute that is supposed to matter the most: impartiality. Chief Justice Hughes sided with FDR when the Constitution sided with FDR; he went against the administration when the Constitution was being assaulted by the administration (which was far more often). Until the switch-in-time fiasco of ’37, at least, Hughes lived up to his oath. Against insurmountable and unprecedented odds.
He was a true American patriot, and in spite of his winter-season weakness he is well deserving of our gratitude and respect. He didn’t start out trying to oppose the most prestigious liberal Democrat presidential administration in history — he just ended up doing that, by having more respect for the rules than what President Roosevelt had. This is exactly what judicial officers are supposed to do.
Yeah, he was inconsistent. He is guilty of abandoning his post. But only when the judicial branch had been shaken to its very core; by which time, the case can certainly be made that sticking by the post was a pointless exercise. Until that point, he stood firm…loyal not to Republicans or Democrats, but to the document he swore to uphold. Furthermore — sometime, when you have time to spare, just gather up some of his opinions and read them. They are works of art, models for how Supreme Court decisions should be written — and decided — indeed, for how all important thinking should be done. I wish I could say that about a majority of our current justices.
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