Pierce Butler (justice)
| Pierce Butler | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court | |
| In office December 21, 1922[1] – November 16, 1939 |
|
| Nominated by | Warren G. Harding |
| Preceded by | William R. Day |
| Succeeded by | Frank Murphy |
| Personal details | |
| Born | March 17, 1866 Dakota County, Minnesota |
| Died | November 16, 1939 (aged 73) Washington, D.C. |
| Spouse(s) | Annie M. Cronin |
| Religion | Roman Catholic[2] |
Pierce Butler (March 17, 1866 – November 16, 1939) was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1923 until his death in 1939. He is notable for being the first Justice from Minnesota, and for being a Democrat appointed by a Republican president.
Contents |
[edit] Early life and education
Butler was born to Patrick and Mary Ann Butler, Catholic immigrants from County Wicklow, Ireland. (The pair met in Galena, Illinois, after having left the same part of Ireland because of the Irish Potato Famine.) Soon, the couple settled in Pine Bend (now Rosemount), Dakota County, Minnesota. Their son Pierce Butler was the sixth of nine children born in a log cabin; all but his sister would live to adulthood.
Butler graduated from Carleton College, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. He read for the law and was admitted to the bar in 1888.
[edit] Marriage and family
Butler married Annie M. Cronin in 1891.
[edit] Career
He was elected as county attorney in Ramsey County in 1892, and re-elected in 1894. Butler joined the law firm of How & Eller in 1896, which became How & Butler after the death of Homer C. Eller the following year. He accepted an offer to work in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he took care of railroad-related litigation for James J. Hill.
In 1905 he returned to private practice and rejoined Jared How. He had also served as a lawyer for the company owned by his five brothers. In 1908, Butler was elected President of the Minnesota State Bar Association.
From 1912 to 1922, he worked in railroad law in Canada, representing, alternately, shareholders of railroad companies and the Canadian government; he produced favorable results for both. When he was nominated to the United States Supreme Court in 1922, Butler was in the process of winning approximately $12,000,000 for the Toronto Street Railway shareholders.
[edit] Nomination and confirmation
Although he was supported by Chief Justice and former President William Howard Taft, Butler's opposition to "radical" and "disloyal" professors at the University of Minnesota (where he had served on the Board of Regents) made him a controversial Supreme Court nominee when proposed by Republican President Warren Harding. The Senator-elect Henrik Shipstead of his home state opposed him, as did the Progressive Senator Robert M. LaFollette, Sr. of Wisconsin. Also against his confirmation were labor activists, some liberal magazines (the New Republic and The Nation) and, on the other side, the Ku Klux Klan because he was Catholic. However, with the support of prominent Roman Catholics, fellow lawyers (the Minnesota State Bar Association strongly endorsed him), and business groups (especially railroad companies), as well as Minnesota's other senator Knute Nelson, Butler was confirmed by a wide margin of 61 to 8. The Senators who voted against him were five Democrats (Walter F. George, William J. Harris, J. Thomas Heflin, Morris Sheppard, and Park Trammell) and three Republicans (Robert M. LaFollette, Sr., Peter Norbeck, and George W. Norris). He took his seat on the Court on January 2, 1923.
[edit] Court service
As an Associate Justice, Butler vigorously opposed regulation of business and the implementation of welfare programs by the Federal government (as unconstitutional). During the Great Depression, he ruled against the constitutionality of many of "New Deal" laws supported by his fellow Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, earning him a place among the so-called "Four Horsemen," which also included James Clark McReynolds, George Sutherland, and Willis Van Devanter.
He wrote the majority (6-3) opinion in United States v. Schwimmer, in which the Hungarian immigrant's application for citizenship was denied. In Palko v. Connecticut, Butler was the lone dissenter on the court; the rest of the justices believed that a state was not restrained from trying a man a second time for the same crime. Butler believed this violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
In Buck v. Bell, Butler was the only Justice who dissented from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s opinion holding that the forced sterilization of an allegedly "feeble-minded" woman in Virginia was constitutional. Holmes believed that Butler's religion influenced his thinking in Buck, remarking that "Butler knows this is good law, I wonder whether he will have the courage to vote with us in spite of his religion.".[3] Although Butler dissented in both Buck and Palko, he did not write a dissenting opinion in either case; the practice of a Justice's noting a dissent without opinion was much more common then than it would be in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Butler died in Washington, DC, at the age of 73 while still on the court. He is buried in the Calvary Cemetery in St. Paul.
Justice Butler was one of 13 Catholic justices – out of 111 total through the appointment of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Samuel Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts – in the history of the Supreme Court.[4]
[edit] See also
 |
Wikisource has original works written by or about: Pierce Butler |
- List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States
- List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States
- List of United States Chief Justices by time in office
- List of U.S. Supreme Court Justices by time in office
- United States Supreme Court cases during the Hughes Court
- United States Supreme Court cases during the Taft Court
[edit] References
- Pierce Butler’s Judicial profile
- Danelski, David J. (1964). A Supreme Court Justice is Appointed. New York: Random House. p. 242.
[edit] Notes
- ^ "Federal Judicial Center: Pierce Butler". 2009-12-12. http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo?jid=335. Retrieved 2009-12-12.
- ^ [1]
- ^ William E. Leuchtenburg, "Mr. Justice Holmes and Three Generations of Imbeciles, in The Supreme Court Reborn: The Constitutional Revolution in the Age of Roosevelt (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) p. 15.
- ^ Religious affiliation of Supreme Court justices Justice Sherman Minton converted to Catholicism after his retirement.
[edit] Further reading
- Abraham, Henry J. (1992). Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506557-3.
- Cushman, Clare (2001). The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789–1995 (2nd ed.). (Supreme Court Historical Society, Congressional Quarterly Books). ISBN 1568021267.
- Frank, John P. (1995). Friedman, Leon; Israel, Fred L.. eds. The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions. Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 0791013774.
- Hall, Kermit L., ed. (1992). The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195058356.
- Martin, Fenton S.; Goehlert, Robert U. (1990). The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Books. ISBN 0871875543.
- Urofsky, Melvin I. (1994). The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland Publishing. pp. 590. ISBN 0815311761.
==External links
- Pierce Butler (justice) at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
| Legal offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by William R. Day |
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States December 21, 1922 – November 16, 1939 |
Succeeded by Frank Murphy |
