The Waite Court: Justices, Rulings, and Legacy (ABC-Clio Supreme Court Handbooks)

368 Pages·2003·2.25 MB·English

by  Donald Stephenson

The Waite Court
ABC-CLIO SUPREME COURT HANDBOOKS
The Burger Court, Tinsley E. Yarbrough
The Fuller Court, James W. Ely, Jr.
The Hughes Court, Michael E. Parrish
The Stone Court, Peter G. Renstrom
The Taft Court, Peter G. Renstrom
The Taney Court, Timothy S. Huebner
The Waite Court, Donald Grier Stephenson, Jr.
The Warren Court,Melvin I. Urofsky
Forthcoming:
The Chase Court,Jonathan Lurie
The Jay/Ellsworth Court,Matthew P. Harrington
The Marshall Court, Robert L. Clinton
The Rehnquist Court, Thomas R. Hensley
The Vinson Court,Michal R. Belknap
The White Court, Rebecca S. Shoemaker
Peter G. Renstrom, Series Editor
ABC-CLIO SUPREME COURT HANDBOOKS
The Waite Court
Justices,
Rulings, and
Legacy
Donald Grier Stephenson, Jr.
ABC-CLIO
Santa Barbara, California • Denver, Colorado • Oxford, England
Copyright © 2003 by Donald Grier Stephenson, Jr.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval sys-
tem, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without
prior permission in writing from the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Waite Court : justices, rulings, and legacy / by Donald Grier
Stephenson, Jr.
p. cm. — (ABC-CLIO Supreme Court handbooks)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-57607-829-9 (hardcover : alk. paper); ISBN 1-57607-830-2 (e-book)
1. United States. Supreme Court—History—19th century. 2. Waite,
Morrison R. (Morrison Remick), 1816–1888. 3. Constitutional
history—United States. I. Title. II. Series.
KF8742.S742 2003
347.73'26'09034—dc22
2003020338
07 06 05 04 03 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ABC-CLIO, Inc.
130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911
Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911
This book is printed on acid-free paper I.
Manufactured in the United States of America
In memory of my father
Donald Grier Stephenson
(1911–2002)
and
in honor of my grandson
Jackson Kincaid Coyle,
winsome young man of two

Contents
Series Foreword, ix
Preface, xi
PART ONE
Justices, Rulings, and Legacy, 1
1 The Waite Court and the Period, 3
Legacy of the Chase Court, 4
The Waite Court: A Collective Portrait, 10
Assembling the Waite Court, 16
A Changing America, 33
Expanding Jurisdiction, Exploding Docket, 35
The Business of the Waite Court, 38
The Waite Court at Work, 47
References, 51
2 The Justices, 55
The Buchanan Appointment, 57
The Lincoln Appointments, 63
The Grant Appointments, 88
The Hayes Appointments, 110
The Garfield Appointment, 121
The Arthur Appointments, 127
The Cleveland Appointment, 138
References, 142
3 Major Decisions, 145
Prelude: The Reconstruction Amendments and The Slaughterhouse Cases, 145
Civil Rights, 153
The Bill of Rights, 169
vii
viii
Contents
Due Process of Law and the State Police Power, 188
The Commerce Clause, 200
References, 219
4 Legacy and Impact, 221
Part Classical, Part Modern: The Waite Bench as a Transition Court, 223
The Justices and the Electoral Commission of 1877, 228
Waite as Court Leader, 236
The Waite Court at the Bar of History, 244
References, 251
PART TWO
Reference Materials, 255
Key People, Laws, and Events, 257
Chronology, 285
Table of Cases, 293
Glossary, 299
Annotated Bibliography, 309
Index, 329
About the Author, 351
Series Foreword
T
here is an extensive literature on the U.S. Supreme Court, but it contains dis-
cussion familiar largely to the academic community and the legal profession.
The ABC-CLIO Supreme Court series is designed to have value to the aca-
demic and legal communities also, but each volume is intended as well for the gen-
eral reader who does not possess an extensive background on the Court or American
constitutional law. The series is intended to effectively represent each of fourteen pe-
riods in the history of the Supreme Court with each of these fourteen eras defined by
the chief justice beginning with John Jay in 1789. Each Court confronted constitu-
tional and statutory questions that were of major importance to and influenced by the
historical period. The Court’s decisions were also influenced by the values of each of
the individual justices sitting at the time. The issues, the historical period, the jus-
tices, and the Supreme Court’s decisions in the most significant cases will be exam-
ined in the volumes of this series.
ABC-CLIO’s Supreme Court series provides scholarly examinations of the Court
as it functioned in different historical periods and with different justices. Each vol-
ume contains information necessary to understand each particular Court and an in-
terpretative analysis by the author of each Court’s record and legacy. In addition to
representing the major decisions of each Court, institutional linkages are examined
as well—the political connections among the Court, Congress, and the president.
These relationships are important for several reasons. Although the Court retains
some institutional autonomy, all the Court’s justices are selected by a process that in-
volves the other two branches. Many of the significant decisions of the Court involve
the review of actions of Congress or the president. In addition, the Court frequently
depends on the other two branches to secure compliance with its rulings.
The authors of the volumes in the ABC-CLIO series were selected with great care.
Each author has worked extensively with the Court, the period, and the personalities
about which he or she has written. ABC-CLIO wanted each of the volumes to examine
several common themes, and each author agreed to work within certain guidelines.
Each author was free, however, to develop the content of each volume, and many of the
volumes advance new or distinctive conclusions about the Court under examination.
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