Waite

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merri ok

ruled on Bell telephone patent fight?

 also anti-misceganation overtirned in Loving

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waite_Court

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_Claims

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better versions elsewhere

3 pp

https://money.howstuffworks.com/corporation-person2.htm

What's strange, Hartmann points out, is that the justices hadn't ruled that way at all. Even fishier, the court reporter was a former railroad president source: [Hartmann]. Ultimately, since it was a headnote (a commentary prefix to the court record) written by the reporter, it didn't constitute law. But it did set precedent. Two years later, this idea was upheld in another case: Pembina Consolidated Mining and Milling Co. v. Pennsylvania source: [Aljalian]....404 waybck

{In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.,4 the Court declared that a corporation is protected by the same rights as natural persons for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause, thus eliminating any uncertainty and providing an anticlimactic end to the debate.42

Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite 3 stated: The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to... corporations. We are ... of [the] opinion that it does.4

Two years later, in Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining & Milling Co. v. Pennsylvania,45 the Court reaffirmed corporate personhood under both the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.46 Did the members of the Court exercise legal reasoning, understanding the purpose and conforming to the spirit of the Fourteenth Amendment? Chief Justice Waitewas the very justice who stated that to deny women the right to vote was not a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment,47 and authored opinions which limited the protection of newly-emancipated slaves.48

...4 See United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875) (refusing to allow federal intervention into various state actions that allegedly breached Fourteenth Amendment protection); United States v. Reese, 92 U.S. 214 (1875) (upholding the dismissal of one of two indictments against Kentucky election inspectors for violating...the Fifteenth Amendment by not allowing an otherwise qualified citizen of African descent to vote); see also OXFORD, supra note 43, at 906. }

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thom bk?

In 1886, the Supreme Court met in the U.S. Capitol building, in what is now called the Old Senate Chamber. It was May, and while the northeastern states were slowly recovering from the most devastating ice storm of the century just three months earlier, Washington DC was warm and abloom.

In the Supreme Court's chamber, a gold gilt eagle stretched its six-foot wingspan over his head as United States Chief Justice Morris Remick Waite glared down at the attorneys for the Southern Pacific Railroad and the county of Santa Clara, California. Waite was about to pronounce judgment in a case that had been argued over a year earlier at the end of January, 1885.}:

The Chief Justice had a square head with a wide slash of a mouth over a broom-like shock of bristly graying beard that shot out in every direction. A graduate of Yale University and formerly a lawyer out of Toledo, Ohio, Waite had specialized in defending railroads and large corporations. In 1846 Waite had run as a Whig for Congress from Ohio but lost, finally being elected as a Republican State Representative in 1849.

After serving a single term, he'd gone back to litigation on behalf of the biggest and most wealthy clients he could find, this time joining the Geneva Arbitration case suing the British government for helping to outfit the Confederate Army with the warship the Alabama. He and his delegation won an astounding $15.5 million for the United States in 1871, bringing him national attention in what was often referred to as the Alabama Claims case.}:

In 1874, when Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase died, President Ulysses S. Grant had real trouble selecting a replacement, in part because his administration was embroiled in a railroad bribery scandal. His first two choices withdrew; his third was so patently political it was certain to be rejected by the Senate; three others similarly failed to pass muster.On his seventh try, he nominated attorney Waite.

Waite had never before been a judge in any court, but he passed Senate confirmation, instantly becoming the most powerful judge in the most powerful court in the land.It was a position and power he relished and promoted, even turning down the 1876 Republican nomination for President to stay on the Court and to serve as a member of the Yale [University] Corporation.

Standing before Waite and the other Justices of the Supreme Court this spring day were three attorneys each for the railroad and the county....

==

Far from being unusual, the hurried and partisan Supreme Court confirmation process for Brett Kavanaugh mirrors several notable examples of similarly politicized confirmations in U.S. history.

Those conflicts, which ultimately placed justices on the court, yielded some of the most damaging civil rights decisions in our nation’s history.

Unlike any other branch of government, Supreme Court justices do not have to face voters at the polls. They have no term limits. Yet the high court is the final arbiter of constitutional rights and protections.

Controversial appointees who were rammed through hearings, or political careerists nominated for strategic reasons and confirmed despite scant vetting, handed down decisions that expanded slavery and rolled back civil rights.

Bad processes do not by themselves yield bad decisions. There have also been thinly vetted justices who have protected and extended civil rights, but such cases are in a minority.

Of course, all Supreme Court nominations are political because they embody the strategic priorities of the president. And the required Senate confirmation of a nominee may well be a “vapid and hollow charade,” in Justice Elena Kagan’s words, since partisan support matters over merit.

But as history shows, judicious confirmation hearings are vital to vetting a lifetime appointment that can affect citizens’ right to vote, access to courts, or the limits of presidential power.

Portrait of Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney by George P.A. Healy. The Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

Bad process, bad decisions

Roger B. Taney was a partisan warrior who helped President Andrew Jackson kill the Bank of the United States by illegally draining its funds. Congress refused to confirm Taney as treasury secretary and censured Jackson.

So Jackson named Taney to the Supreme Court. The Senate refused to confirm him. The next year, after Jackson got a Democratic Senate, he renominated him, this time as chief justice. Taney was pushed hurriedly through confirmation.

The Taney Court was staunchly pro-slavery, rejecting states’ rights when Northerners asserted them to oppose slavery.

Taney’s most sweeping pro-slavery decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857 held that African-Americans “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” The decision ruled that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in any U.S. territory. Dred Scott is widely considered to be one of the worst decisions ever made by the court.

A critical time

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was able to replace the Taney Court with corporation-friendly Republicans like Samuel F. Miller of Iowa, whom he nominated in 1862. Lincoln’s court strategy was to appoint Republicans who would endorse presidential powers in a war to save the Union.

Like Taney, Miller had owned slaves but freed them. And he was a party loyalist. As Miller’s biographer claims, he “sought results first and then found the arguments to justify them.”

Miller’s appointment came just as Lincoln was contemplating the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln could have asked Miller his views on the scope of black freedom, but he never did. He never even met Miller. And with no opposition in Congress, the Senate confirmed Miller in just hours.

Miller’s appointment may have been shrewd politics but it hollowed out the Civil War’s crowning achievement, the abolition of slavery and constitutional protections for African-American citizenship, including equal protection of the laws and the right to vote.

It was Miller’s majority ruling in the 5-4 Slaughterhouse Cases in 1873 that had the effect of limiting civil rights protections for African-Americans under the 14th Amendment, which extended citizenship to African-Americans and forbade states to deny them equal protection of the laws. The ruling in effect gave states sole power over areas of citizenship not explicitly covered in the federal Constitution. That, in turn, ultimately led to the growth of racist Jim Crow laws in states.

Justice Joseph P. Bradley, appointed by Ulysses S. Grant. Supreme Court

President Ulysses Grant’s two nominees were also pushed through hastily and had an oversized impact on civil rights.

Those appointments – conservative pro-business Republican Joseph P. Bradley and political hack Morrison Waite – unwittingly undermined Grant’s own Justice Department’s civil rights enforcement.

In 1870 Grant appointed Bradley specifically to help business interests concerned about recent decisions that they believed harmed them. Bradley faced scant opposition from a majority-Republican Senate in bed with railroad and other corporate interests.

Four years later, Grant picked Waite, a crony of Grant’s Ohio friends, who had zero judicial experience. Called a “national nonentity” by a court historian, Waite’s appointment surprised everyone, including Waite. The Senate confirmed him without debate.

The unintended consequences of these two overtly political nominations became clear in U.S. v. Cruikshank, an 1876 court decision.

In April 1873, up to 150 African-Americans were murdered by whites in a conflict over two competing Louisiana governments. Among those whites was William Cruikshank.

Cruikshank and others who participated in the massacre were charged and convicted in federal court of civil rights violations under the Enforcement Act of 1870. That act made it a federal crime to violate civil rights and was passed with the intention of putting teeth in the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed equal protection of the laws and due process. The case considered by the court was an appeal of those initial convictions.

Justice Waite ruled that the 14th Amendment’s civil rights provisions, including the equal protections of the laws and right to due process, did not apply to the victims of the Colfax Massacre.

Justice Bradley concurred in the ruling, clearing Cruikshank. Indeed, Bradley declared that none of the Colfax Massacre defendants were alleged to have “committed the acts complained of with a design to deprive the injured persons of their rights on account of their race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Bradley and Waite’s responses constituted willful blindness to a naked act of racial terrorism. And these decisions gutted the 14th Amendment’s civil rights provisions, leading to the swift and violent rise of Jim Crow.

More damage

Bradley went on to rule in 1883 that the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which outlawed racial discrimination in public facilities, was unconstitutional. He did this at a time when blacks were being denied the right to vote, barred from businesses and murdered with impunity. Bradley tutted that with his ruling a black citizen “ceases to be the special favorite of the laws.” And the law ended protection for African-Americans from segregation in schools, theaters and even cemeteries.

It would be 74 years before Congress passed another civil rights act.

Not all justices involved in partisan nominations, or who were poorly vetted, handed down dreadful rulings.

Louis D. Brandeis’ nomination in 1916 led to a bitter partisan brawl infused with anti-Semitism. One witness at his confirmation accused him of “infidelity,” and another characterized Brandeis as “duplicitous”.

Louis Brandeis won a bitter nomination fight to the Supreme Court.Boston Journal, June 2, 1916

Yet Brandeis became one of the nation’s most renowned Supreme Court justices, standing up for free speech in Whitney v. California in 1927 and dissenting in Olmstead v. United States the next year against warrantless wiretapping.

Harold H. Burton was a surprise nomination when Democrat Harry Truman nominated the Republican senator from Ohio in 1945. The Senate dispensed with hearings and confirmed Burton without debate. But Burton defied expectations, shaping the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) ruling that desegregated schools and overturned the Jim Crow doctrine of “separate but equal.”

Back to the 19th century

More recently, contested nominations have revived the 19th-century practice of ramming through partisans whose decisions undermine civil rights.

The 1991 Clarence Thomas nomination evokes that legacy. With a thin resume, partisan credentials, and his nomination hastily pushed through by George H. W. Bush’s administration, Thomas won a lifetime appointment by a two-vote margin after an acrimonious hearing involving his alleged sexual harrassment.

Justice Thomas is arguably among the most conservative justices. He joined Chief Justice John Roberts in the landmark 5-4 Shelby County v. Holderdecision gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, like that of Morrison Waite, Joseph P. Bradley and Roger B. Taney, has been rushed. A partisan warrior, he has been hastily advanced, with the majority of his papers withheld and sexual assault allegations overtaking his hearings.

As American history has shown, this process comes with profound risks.

Calvin Schermerhorn, Professor of History, Arizona State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

==

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hartmann

Or maybe not?

The Republican conspiracy theory collapses In the 1960s, author, attorney, and legal historian Howard Jay Graham came across a previously unexamined treasure in the personal papers of Chief Justice Waite, which had been gathering dust among the J. C. Bancroft Davis Papers on file with the Library of Congress.In Waite's private correspondences with Davis (his former Recorder of the Court's Decisions), Graham made a startling discovery: the entire thing had been a mistake.What had vexed legal authorities for nearly eighty years was why Waite would say 'The Court does not wish to hear argument'' when the arguments were already finished. Further, why wasn't there any discussion of this explosive new doctrine of corporate personhood in the Court's ruling or in dissents? It was as if they said it, and then forgot they'd mentioned it. And complicating the situation further, if the Court had arrived at a huge Constitutional decision with sweeping implications, why did the decision say it was based on a technicality about fences?It just didn't seem to add up.Looking over Waite's personal papers, Graham found a note from J. C. Bancroft Davis, the Supreme Court's Reporter, to Waite. At one point in the arguments, Waite had apparently told Sanderson to get beyond his arguments that corporations are persons and get to the point of the Santa Clara County tax case. Court reporter Davis, apparently seeking to clarify that, wrote to Waite:In opening the Court stated that it did not wish to hear argument on the question whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to such corporations as are parties in these suits. All the Judges were of opinion that it does.Please let me know whether I correctly caught your words and oblige.Waite wrote back:I think your mem. in the California Railroad Tax cases expresses with sufficient accuracy what was said before the argument began. I leave it with you to determine whether anything need be said about it in the report inasmuch as we avoided meeting the constitutional question in the decision. (Emphasis added.)Graham notes in an article first published in the Vanderbilt Law Review that Waite explicitly pointed out to court reporter Davis that the constitutional question of corporate personhood was not included in their decision.According to Graham, Waite was instead saying 'something to the effect of, 'The Court does not wish to hear further argument on whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to these corporations. That point was elaborately covered in 1882 [in the San Mateo case], and has been re-covered in your briefs. We all presently are clear enough there. Our doubts run rather to the substance [of the case ... the fence issue]. Assume accordingly, as we do, that your clients are persons under the Equal Protection Clause. Take the cases on from there, clarifying the California statutes, the application thereof, and the merits.''In my opinion, Waite was saying something to the effect of, 'Every judge and lawyer knows that corporations are persons of the artificial sort - corporations have historically been referred to as 'artificial persons,' and so to the extent that the Fourteenth Amendment covers them it does so on a corporation-to-corporation basis. But we didn't rule on the railroad's claim that corporations should have rights equal to human persons under the Fourteenth Amendment, so I leave it up to you if you're going to mention the debates or not.'Another legal scholar and author, C. Peter Magrath, was going through Waite's papers at the same time as Graham for the biography he published in 1963 titled Morrison R. Waite: Triumph of Character. In his book, he notes the above exchange and then says, 'In other words, to the Reporter fell the decision which enshrined the declaration in the United States Reports. Had Davis left it out, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pac. R. Co. would have been lost to history among thousands of uninteresting tax cases.'It was all, at the very best, a mistake by a court reporter. There never was a decision on corporate personhood.'So here at last,' writes Graham, ''now for then,' is that long-delayed birth certificate, the reason this seemingly momentous step never was justified by formal opinion.' He adds, in a wry note for a legal scholar, 'Think, in this instance too, what the United States might have been spared had events taken a slightly different turn.' Graham's conspiracy theory In Everyman's Constitution, Howard Jay Graham suggests that if there was an error made on the part of the court Reporter J. C. Bancroft Davis - as the record seems to show was clear - it was probably the result of efforts by Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field.Field was very much an outsider on the court, and despised by Waite. As Graham notes, 'Field had repeatedly embarrassed Waite and the Court by close association with the Southern Pacific proprietors and by zeal and bias in their behalf. He had thought nothing of pressuring Waite for assignment of opinions in various railroad cases, of placing his friends as counsel for the road in upcoming cases, of hinting at times he and they should take, even of passing on to such counsel in the undecided San Mateo case 'certain memoranda which had been handed me by two of the Judges.''Field had presidential ambitions, and was relying on the railroads to back him. He'd publicly announced on several occasions that if he were elected President he'd enlarge the size of the Supreme Court to 22 so he could pack it with 'able and conservative men.'Field also thought poorly of Waite, calling him upon his appointment 'His Accidency' and 'that experiment' of Ulysses Grant. Waite didn't have the social graces of Fields, who was often described as a 'popinjay,' and even though he'd been a lawyer for the railroads and others, the record appears to show that Waite did his best to be a truly impartial Chief Justice during his tenure, eventually literally working himself to death. But Field was a grandstander, who served on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals of California at the same time he was a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. It was often his 'corporations are a person' decisions in California cases that led them to reappear before the U.S. Supreme Court - no accident on Field's part - including the San Mateo case in 1882 and the Santa Clara County case in 1886.And when the justices did not decide (contrary to what Court Reporter Davis published months after the decision) that constitutional issues were involved in the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case, Justice Field was incensed. In his concurring opinion to the Santa Clara case, even though he's agreeing with the finding that fence posts should have a different tax rate than railroad land, he's clearly upset that the issue of corporate personhood was not addressed or answered in the case. He wrote:[The court had failed in] its duty to decide the important constitution questions involved, and particularly the one which was so fully considered in the Circuit Court [where Field was also the judge], and elaborately argued here, that in the assessment, upon which the taxes claimed were levied, an unlawful and unjust discrimination was made'and to that extent depriving it [the railroad 'person'] of the equal protection of the laws. At the present day nearly all great enterprises are conducted by corporations' [a] vast portion of the wealth 'is in their hands. It is, therefore, of the greatest interest to them whether their property is subject to the same rules of assessment and taxation as like property of natural persons'whether the State'may prescribe rules for the valuation of property for taxation which will vary according as it is held by individuals or by corporations. The question is of transcendent importance, and it will come here and continue to come until it is authoritatively decided in harmony with the great constitutional amendment (Fourteenth) which insures to every person, whatever his position or association, the equal protection of the laws; and that necessarily implies freedom from the imposition of unequal burdens under the same conditions.In Everyman's Constitution, Graham documents scores of additional attempts by Supreme Court Justice Field to influence or even suborn the legal process to the benefit of his open patrons, the railroad corporations. Field's personal letters, revealed nearly a century after his death, show that his motivations, in addition to wealth and fame, were Presidential aspirations - he wrote about his hopes that in 1880 and 1884 the railroads would finance his rise to the Presidency, which may explain his zeal to please his potential financiers in 1882 in the San Mateo case and the 1886 Santa Clara case. Railroad Largess The 1880s were a momentous decade for the U.S. Supreme Court and its impact on U.S. institutions. In hope of learning more about the judicial culture of the Santa Clara decision we visited Washington in June, 2010, where we spent four days in the Madison Library of Congress among the papers of Morrison Waite from the period 1884-1888. One of the first things we learned was how common it was for railroads to provide free services, often quite valuable, to Waite and other judges, even as they adjudicated railroad cases. It was the iconic Gilded Ager himself, President Grant, who appointed Waite Chief Justice. He was not Grant’s first choice. He was Grant’s seventh choice, an Ohio lawyer educated at Yale (Phi Beta Kappa, Skull and Bones), with no judicial experience. Hartmann (2002) describes Waite as one who had made a specialty of the defense of railroads and big corporations. He had won national recognition in 1871 as a participant in a successful suit against the British government, worth $15.5 million, for having helped to provide the Confederates with a famous warship, the Alabama. As Chief Justice, Waite soon gained repute as a quick study, honest and industrious to a fault. The Waite Court ran from 1874 to 1888, the year of his sudden death, when the nation’s mourning revealed his popularity. We were struck by the number of ordinary citizens who wrote personal letters to Waite in appeal for help or sympathy. They included several widows of Civil War veterans who sought government pensions as a desperate last resort. Some of Waite’s supplicants were questionable. On March 18, 1885, Henry Newbegin, of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, wrote to Waite about an opening for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio. He wanted Waite to help him secure this position behind the scenes; he did not want to apply or run for the position. But Waite had his scruples: On March 23, 1885, he replied that he wished not to do such a thing. Newbegin responded with a long letter that came down to a denial that he had asked Waite for any favor. (Morrison R. Waite Papers, Box 23, Folder 9.) Hartmann’s impression, based on Waite’s Supreme Court record, is that Waite strove to be impartial (Hartmann, 2002, p. 96). Our study of his papers left a less favorable impression. While sitting in judgment of railroad cases, Waite partook quitefreely of railroad largess in the form of annual railroad passes for himself and his family.Strive as one might, such favors must harm the appearance of impartiality, if not its substance 2 It seemed to be an established custom for railroads, early in January of each year, to send Waite and other luminaries a free pass for that year. When Waite took a long trip, he traveled by rail and often had a private Pullman car at his disposal that would be handed from one railroad company to the next, according to the route. Waite never troubled himself with the mundane details of trip planning or railroad arrangements. He left those to his son, C. C., himself a railroad executive, who always handled the myriad details personally. This occurred at a time when railroad cases were regular fare on the Supreme Court menu. The Justices, many of them former railroad lawyers, seemed to see no flagrant conflict of interest in their acceptance of railroad favors, but others did. Eventually Congress took a dim view of such amenities, and passed legislation that put a stop to them (the Interstate Commerce Act, approved February 4, 1887). In 1887 the annual rush of railroad greetings and free passes came to a grinding halt. Some examples follow. In January, 1884, the Chief Justice and his family received annual passes from two railroads, the Louisville, New Albany and Chicago, and the Wheeling & Lake Erie. (Morrison R. Waite Papers, Box 23, Folders 2 and 4.) The following December Waite received a card for free travel from the Baltimore & Ohio, and a letter from H. L. Bond to say that his car was at the service of the Chief Justice and his family; he would see that everything was arranged to make his journey as comfortable as a railroad could. (Morrison R. Waite Papers, Box 23, Folder 2.) The favors continued in January, 1885, with an annual pass from Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Company, Cleveland. J. H. Devereaux, President of the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railroad, sent Waite a personal message, enclosing an annual pass on his railroad for 1885, and sending best wishes for the new year. Son C. C. Waite, Vice President of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad, arranged for a railroad car for Justice Matthews. (Morrison R. Waite Papers, Box 23, Folder 5.) He also sent his father a long letter about railroad passes and the arrangement of private car transportation between railroads, including transportation by Pullman car. (Morrison R. Waite Papers, Box 23, Folder 4.) Steamship companies chipped in: C. C. wrote to arrange for his father river steamship transportation on the DeBary-Baya Merchants Line. Strings were pulled: C. C. wrote to arrange a meeting between his father and W. O. Hughart, a railroad president. (Morrison R. Waite Papers, Box 23, Folder 5.) There was more of the same in February. While Waite was in Florida, C. C. offered to arrange a “run” to New Orleans, then Cincinnati. Returns were expected: J. H. Devereaux, President of the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railroad, asked Waite for the bona fides of a person who had come to the attention 8 of Devereaux. (Morrison R. Waite Papers, Box 23, Folder 6.) C. C. made travel arrangements and solicited passes for Waite from two railroads. (Morrison R. Waite Papers, Box 23, Folder 5.) The following January, 1886, Waite received three more railroad passes from railroads or their law offices. (Morrison R. Waite Papers, Box 24, Folder 10.) In the same month the Court heard arguments in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company. The decision came on May 10, 1886. Ten days after the Santa Clara decision, as Chief Justice Waite and his daughter prepared for a trip to Alaska, a letter came to U.S. Senator Joseph N. Dolph, of Oregon. In response to Dolph’s request, the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company offered free transportation to Waite and his daughter. (Morrison R. Waite Papers, Box 25, Folder 2.) (Dolph represented this and other railroads during his career.) It was only a few days later, on May 25, when Court Reporter J. C. Bancroft Davis wrote his query to Waite about the applicability of the Fourteenth Amendment to corporations. As he arranged the Alaska trip for his father and sister in 1886, C. C. Waite, taking care of passes, had a favorable reply from Central Pacific Railroad Company, San Francisco. The message, dated June 6, bore the words “Southern Pacific” stamped in red. (Morrison R. Waite Papers, Box 25, Folder 5.) On August 18 the Oregon California Railroad wrote to another railroad about passes for the next stage of the trip. (Morrison R. Waite Papers, Box 25, Folder 6.) Several days later, in the Golden State, Leland Stanford--President of Southern Pacific Railroad, U. S. Senator from California, and former California Governor--arranged for Waite and several California judges to make an excursion to Monterey. In a letter dated September 3, Waite’s description of the excursion referred to a private railroad car and abundant Chinese servants everywhere they went. (Morrison R. Waite Papers, Box 25, Folder 10.) On September 15 he noted more railroad travel in California, northeast from San Francisco to Truckee, in the company of many luminaries of law, government and the Mormon Church. We cannot tote up the exact value of the Waites’ free trip to Alaska, but we can approximate a significant portion from records in the Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum. In 1882 the first class one-way fare from Omaha to San Francisco, half the distance from Washington, D.C., was $100--about 20% of the average annual wage. The steamship fare, cabin class, from San Francisco to Sitka, was $55. Extrapolation places a round-trip cost for two persons at $1,020, or 204% of the average annual wage. The reader may imagine the additional cost of a private Pullman car, which often came with a kitchen, a cook, and one or two 9 servants. We cannot approximate the cost to Leland Stanford of those side trips to Truckee and Monterey. Lest we sneer at these touches as tawdry Gilded Age practice, let us note their resemblance to corporate largess of our time: executive jet travel, private hunting lodges, sojourns at the Bohemian Grove, and corporate junkets for judges. The New Year’s Railroad Pass tradition came to an end in 1887, the year after Santa Clara. We can see its demise in a letter to Waite, dated March 19, 1887, from John Newell, President of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad Company. “My Dear Sir, By the terms of the Inter-State Commerce Law it is made unlawful for this Co. to permit the use of a pass issued to you after the 4th day of April next. Will you, therefore, kindly return the same on or before that day? In accordance with the law, conductors will be instructed to refuse to honor any Interstate passes after the 4th day of April, except such as appear upon their face to have been issued to officers or employees of this or other railroad companies.” [Note: This letter was printed, not hand written. “Pass” letters had typically been hand written.] (Morrison R. Waite Papers, Box 26, Folder 8.) Newell’s mention of the “Inter-State Commerce Law” reminds us that the great social pressures of the day were not only corporate; some were populist. It was largely public and agrarian demand that inspired Congress to pass the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, which made railroads the first industry subject to federal regulation. But things were probably more complicated than that. The railroad barons were thought to prefer federal regulation to the more restrictive state laws. Railroads Rise to Power http://movetoamend.org/sites/default/files/ClimateOfCorpPersonhood.pdf  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrison_Waite Morrison Remick "Mott" Waite (November 29, 1816 – March 23, 1888) was an attorney and politician in Ohio. He served as the seventh Chief Justice of the United States from 1874 to his death in 1888. Chief Justice Waite was primarily known for overturning federal laws passed during Reconstruction that protected African Americans. Contents  [hide] 1 Early life and education2 Marriage and family3 Political and legal career 3.1 Supreme Court nomination4 The Waite Court, 1874–18885 Role in corporate personhood controversy6 Champion of education opportunities for blacks7 Frankfurter's view of Waite8 Death and legacy9 Quotations10 See also11 Notes12 References13 Further reading14 External links Early life and education[edit]Morrison Remick Waite was born in 1816 at Lyme, Connecticut, the son of Henry Matson Waite, an attorney, and his wife. His father later was appointed as a judge of the Superior Court and associate judge of the Supreme Court of Connecticut, serving 1834–1854; and appointed as chief justice of the latter from 1854–1857. Morrison had a brother Richard, with whom he later practiced law.Waite attended Bacon Academy in Colchester, Connecticut, where one of his classmates was Lyman Trumbull. He graduated from Yale University in 1837 in a class with Samuel J. Tilden, who later was the 1876 Democratic presidential nominee. As a student at Yale, Waite became a member of the Skull and Bones [1] Society and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society in 1837.[2]Soon afterward Waite moved to Maumee, Ohio, where he studied law as an apprentice in the office of Samuel L. Young. He was admitted to the bar in 1839, and went into practice with his mentor. He was elected to one term as mayor of Maumee.Marriage and family[edit]He married Amelia Warner in 1840. They had three sons together: Henry Seldon, Christopher Champlin, Edward T, and one daughter Mary F.Political and legal career[edit]In 1850, Waite and his family moved to Toledo, where he set up a branch office of his law firm with Young. He soon came to be recognized as a leader of the state bar. When Young retired in 1856, Waite built a prosperous new firm with his brother Richard Waite.An active member of the Whig Party, Waite was elected to a term in the Ohio Senate in 1849–1850. He made two unsuccessful bids for the United States Senate, and was offered (but declined) a seat on the Ohio Supreme Court. In the mid-1850s, because of his opposition to slavery, Waite joined the fledglingRepublican Party and helped to organize it in his home state.In 1871, Waite received a surprise invitation to represent the United States (along with William M. Evarts and Caleb Cushing) as counsel before the Alabama Tribunal at Geneva. In his first national role, he gained acclaim when he successfully won a $15 million award from the tribunal. In 1872, he was selected to preside over the Ohio constitutional convention. Supreme Court nomination[edit]President Ulysses S. Grant nominated Waite as Chief Justice on January 19, 1874, after a political circus related to the appointment. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase died in May 1873, and Grant waited six months before first offering the seat in November to the powerful Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York, who declined. After ruling out a promotion of a sitting Associate Justice to Chief (despite much lobbying from the legal community for prominent Justice Samuel Freeman Miller), Grant offered the Chief Justiceship to senators Oliver Morton ofIndiana and Timothy Howe of Wisconsin, then to his Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish. He finally submitted his nomination of Attorney General George H. Williams to the Senate on December 1. A month later, however, Grant withdrew the nomination, at Williams' request, after charges of corruption made his confirmation all but certain to fail. One day after withdrawing Williams, Grant nominated Democrat and former Attorney General Caleb Cushing, but withdrew it after Republican Senators alleged Civil War-era connections between Cushing and the ConfederatePresident Jefferson Davis.Finally, after persistent lobbying from Ohioans, including Interior Secretary Columbus Delano, on January 19, 1874, Grant nominated the little-known Waite. He was notified of his nomination by a telegram.The nomination was not well received in political circles. The former Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, remarked of Waite 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." Nationwide sentiment, however, was relief that a non-divisive and competent choice had been made, and Waite was confirmed unanimously as Chief Justice on January 21, 1874, receiving his commission the same day.[3][4] Waite took the oaths of office on March 4, 1874.[4][5] The Waite Court, 1874–1888[edit]See also: List of United States Supreme Court cases by the Waite CourtChief Justice Waite never became a significant intellectual force on the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, managerial and social skill, "especially his good humor and sensitivity to others, helped him to maintain a remarkably harmonious and productive court."[6] During Waite's tenure, it decided some 3,470 cases. In part, the large number of cases decided and the variety of issues confronted reflected the lack of discretion the Court had at the time in hearing appeals from lower federal and state courts. However, Waite demonstrated an ability to get his brethren to reach decisions and write opinions without delay. His own work habits and output were formidable—he drafted one-third of these opinions.[6]In matters of regulation over economic activity, he supported broad national authority, stating his opinion that federal commerce powers must “keep pace with the progress of the country.” In the same vein, a primary theme in his opinions was the balance of federal and state authority.[6] These opinions influenced Supreme Court jurisprudence well into the 20th century.[4] This notion was also evident in the Waite Court's decisions dealing with the scope and meaning of the Reconstruction Amendments and the rights of blacks in the south.[6]In United States v. Cruikshank the court overturned the convictions of three men accused of massacring at least 105 blacks and three whites in the Colfax massacre outside the Grant Parish, Louisiana, courthouse on Easter 1873. The convictions were thrown out not because the statutes themselves were unconstitutional but because the indictments under which the men were charged were infirm, and did not specifically allege that the murders were committed on account of the victims' race (“We may suspect that race was the cause of the hostility, but it is not so averred.”[6] Waite's social and political orientation was apparent in the Court's response to claims by other groups. In Minor v. Happersett (1875), using the restricted definition of national citizenship and the 14th Amendment as set forth in the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), Waite upheld the states' right to deny women the franchise. However, Waite also sympathized with the women's rights movement and supported the admission of women to the Supreme Court bar.[6] After suffering a breakdown, probably due to overwork, he refused to retire. Almost to the moment of his death, he was still drafting opinions and leading the Court.[6]In the cases that grew out of the American Civil War and Reconstruction, and especially in those that involved the interpretation of the Thirteenth, Fourteenthand Fifteenth amendments, he sympathized with the general tendency of the court to restrict the further extension of the powers of the Federal government. In a particularly notable ruling in United States v. Cruikshank, the court struck down the Enforcement Act, ruling that "The very highest duty of the States, when they entered into the Union under the Constitution, was to protect all persons within their boundaries in the enjoyment of these 'unalienable rights with which they were endowed by their Creator.' Sovereignty, for this purpose, 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 concluded that "We may suspect that race was the cause of the hostility but is it not so averred." His belief was that white moderates 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 belief backfired when arch-segregationists in the South regained power and legislated the infamous Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised African-Americans in the South. These laws lasted well into the 20th century. In his opinion of Munn v. Illinois (1877), which was one of a group of six Granger cases involving Populist-inspired state legislation to fix maximum rates chargeable by grain elevators and railroads, he said that when a business or private property was "affected with a public interest" it was subject to governmental regulation. Thus, the Court was ruling against charges that Granger laws constituted encroachment of private property without due process of law and conflicted with the Fourteenth Amendment. This famous opinion was often regarded as a milestone in the growth of federal government regulation.[7] 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. 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). Among his own most important opinions were those in the Enforcement Act Cases (1875), the Sinking Fund Cases (1878), the Railroad Commission Cases (1886) and the Telephone Cases (1887). 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. Hayesand his classmateship with the Democratic presidential nominee Samuel J. Tilden with whom Waite studied at Yale College.As Chief Justice he swore in Presidents Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur and Grover Cleveland.Role in corporate personhood controversy[edit]See also: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.Justice Waite's remark during a Fourteenth Amendment case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394 (1886), inserteddictum in the headnotes by court reporter John Chandler Bancroft Davis, may be the original basis for the recognition of corporations having the legal rights of a person: "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."[8]Champion of education opportunities for blacks[edit]He 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.Frankfurter's view of Waite[edit]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".Death and legacy[edit]Chief Justice Waite died unexpectedly of pneumonia. This created a stir in Washington, as there had been no hint that his illness was serious. His condition had been treated as confidential, in part to avoid alarming his wife who was in California. The Washington Post devoted its entire front page to his demise. Large crowds joined in the mourning. Except for Justices Bradley and Matthews, all the justices accompanied his body on the special train that went to Toledo. Mrs. Waite came by train from California, arriving just in time for the funeral. Published reports indicated the Chief Justice would be buried in a family plot he had purchased in Forest Hill Cemetery, but he was not in fact interred there.[9][10]For unknown reasons, his remains were not interred in the family plot, but are interred under a handsome monument in Woodlawn Cemetery, Plot: Section 42, by the river in Toledo, Ohio.[11]Waite High School (Toledo, Ohio) is named in his honor.Quotations[edit] “For protection against abuses by legislatures the People must resort to the polls, not the courts.[12]” See also[edit] Corporate personalityDemographics of the Supreme Court of the United StatesList of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United StatesList of United States Chief Justices by time in officeList of U.S. Supreme Court Justices by time in officeUnited States Supreme Court cases during the Waite CourtList of Skull and Bones Members Notes[edit]Jump up^ *"Bonesmen 1833-1899". Fleshing Out Skull and Bones.Jump up^ Supreme Court Justices Who Are Phi Beta Kappa Members, Phi Beta Kappa website, accessed Oct 4, 2009Jump up^ "Morrison Waite". Federal Judicial Center. 2009-12-12. Retrieved 2012-05-21.^ Jump up to:a b c "Morrison R. Waite". Oyez.org. Retrieved May 22, 2012.Jump up^ "Oaths of Office Taken by the Chief Justices". Supreme Court of the United States. Retrieved May 22, 2012.^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g Grand Concourse, The Ohio Judicial Center, Supreme Court of OhioJump up^ Ariens, Michael. "Supreme Court Justices Morrison Waite (1816-1888)". Michael Ariens website. Retrieved May 22, 2012.Jump up^ 118 U.S. 394 (1886) - Official court Syllabus in the United States ReportsJump up^ Christensen, George A. (1983) Here Lies the Supreme Court: Gravesites of the Justices, Yearbook Supreme Court Historical Society at Internet Archive.Jump up^ Christensen, George A., Here Lies the Supreme Court: Revisited, Journal of Supreme Court History, Volume 33 Issue 1, Pages 17 - 41 (Feb 19, 2008),University of Alabama.Jump up^ Morrison Waite memorial at Find a Grave.Jump up^ Munn v. Illinois, 94 U.S. 113, as quoted by Paul Rodgers, United States Constitutional Law: An Introduction, McFarland, 2011, p. 202.References[edit]