Charles Evans Hughes

Charles Evans Hughes, Sr. (April 11, 1862 – August 27, 1948) was an American statesman, lawyer and Republican politician from New York. He served as the 36th Governor of New York (1907–1910), Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1910–1916), United States Secretary of State (1921–1925), a judge on the Court of International Justice (1928–1930), and the 11th Chief Justice of the United States (1930–1941). He was the Republican candidate in the 1916 U.S. Presidential election, losing narrowly to Woodrow Wilson.

Hughes was a professor in the 1890s, an important leader of the progressive movement of the 20th century, a leading diplomat and New York lawyer in the days of Harding and Coolidge, and a leader of opposition to the New Deal in the 1930s. Historian Clinton Rossiter has hailed him as a leading American conservative.^[2]

Early life

Charles Evans Hughes was born in Glens Falls, New York. He was active in the Northern Baptist church, a Mainline Protestant denomination.

Education

Hughes was educated in a private school. At the age of 14 he enrolled at Madison University (now Colgate University) where he became a member of Delta Upsilon fraternity. He then transferred to Brown University continuing as a member of Delta Upsilon. At age of 19, the youngest in his class, he received second-highest honors and graduated in 1881. He read law and entered Columbia Law School in 1882, and he graduated in 1884 with highest honors. While studying law, he taught at Delaware Academy.

Marriage and family

In 1885, he met Antoinette Carter, the daughter of a senior partner of the law firm where he worked, and they were married in 1888. They had one son, Charles Evans Hughes, Jr. and three daughters, one of whom was Elizabeth Hughes Gossett, one of the first humans injected with insulin, and who later served as president of the Supreme Court Historical Society.^[3] Hughes was the grandfather of Charles Evans Hughes III and H. Stuart Hughes.

Early career

After graduating Hughes began working for Chamberlain, Carter & Hornblower where he met his future wife. In 1888, Shortly after he was married, he became a partner in the firm and the name was changed to Carter, Hughes & Cravath. Later the name was changed to Hughes, Hubbard & Reed. In 1891, Hughes left the practice of law to become a professor at the Cornell University Law School, but in 1893, he returned to his old law firm in New York City to continue practice until he ran for governor in 1906. He continued an association with Cornell as a special lecturer from 1893-1895. He was also a special lecturer for New York University Law School, 1893-1900.

At that time, in addition to practicing law, he taught at New York Law School with Woodrow Wilson. In 1905, he was appointed as counsel to the New York state legislative "Stevens Gas Commission", a committee investigating utility rates.^[4] His uncovering of corruption led to lower gas rates in New York City. In 1906, he was appointed to the "Armstrong Insurance Commission" to investigate the insurance industry in New York as a special assistant to U.S. attorney general.

Governor of New York

Hughes served as the Governor of New York from 1907 to 1910. He defeated William Randolph Hearst in the 1906 election to gain the position, and he was the only Republican statewide candidate to win office. In 1908, he was offered the vice-presidential nomination by William Howard Taft, but he declined it to run again for Governor. Theodore Roosevelt became an important supporter of Hughes.^[5]

As the Governor, he pushed the passage of the Lessland Act, which gave him the power as governor to oversee civic officials as well as officials in state bureaucracies. This allowed him to fire many corrupt officials. He also managed to have the powers of the state's Public Service Commissions increased, and he attempted unsuccessfully to have their decisions exempted from judicial review. When two bills were passed to reduce railroad fares, Hughes vetoed them on that grounds that the rates should be set by expert commissioners rather than by elected ones. In his final year as the Governor, he had the state comptroller draw up an executive budget. This began a rationalization of state government and eventually it led to an enhancement of executive authority.

In 1908, Governor Hughes reviewed the clemency petition of Chester Gillette concerning the murder of Grace Brown. The governor denied the petition as well as an application for reprieve, and Gillette was electrocuted in March of that year.

When Hughes left office, a prominent journal remarked "One can distinctly see the coming of a New Statism ... [of which] Gov. Hughes has been a leading prophet and exponent".^[6] In 1926, Hughes was appointed by New York Governor Alfred E. Smith to be the chairman of a State Reorganization Commission through which Smith's plan to place the Governor as the head of a rationalized state government, was accomplished, bringing to realization what Hughes himself had envisioned.

In 1909, he led an effort to incorporate Delta Upsilon fraternity. This was the first fraternity to incorporate, and he served as its first international president.

Supreme Court

In October 1910, Hughes was appointed as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He wrote for the court in Bailey v. Alabama 219 U.S. 219 (1911),^[7] which held that involuntary servitude encompassed more than just slavery, and Interstate Commerce Comm. v. Atchison T & SF R Co. 234 U.S. 294 (1914),^[8] holding that the Interstate Commerce Commission could regulate intrastate rates if they were significantly intertwined with interstate commerce.

On April 15, 1915, in the case of Frank v. Mangum,^[9] the Supreme Court decided (7-2) to deny an appeal made by Leo Frank's attorneys, and instead upheld the decision of lower courts to sustain the guilty verdict against Frank. Justice Hughes and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. were the two dissenting votes.

Presidential candidate

He resigned from the Supreme Court on June 10, 1916,^[10] to be the Republican candidate for President in 1916. He was also endorsed by the Progressive Party.^[11] Hughes was defeated by Woodrow Wilson in a close election (separated by 23 electoral votes and 594,188 popular votes). The election hinged on California, where Wilson managed to win by 3,800 votes and its 13 electoral votes and thus Wilson was returned for a second term; Hughes had lost the endorsement of the California governor when he failed to show up for an appointment with him.

Secretary of State

Hughes returned to government office in 1921 as Secretary of State under President Harding. On November 11, 1921, Armistice Day (changed to Veterans Day), the Washington Naval Conference for the limitation of naval armament among the Great Powers began. The major naval powers of Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the United States were in attendance as well as other nations with concerns about territories in the Pacific — Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal and China.^[12]

The American delegation was headed by Hughes and included Elihu Root, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Oscar Underwood, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate. The conference continued until February 1922 and included the Four-power pact (December 13, 1921), Shantung Treaty (February 4, 1922), Five-Power Treaty, the Nine-Power Treaty (February 6, 1922), the "Six-power pact" that was an agreement between the Big Five Nations plus China to divide the German cable routes in the Pacific, and the Yap Island agreement.^[13]

Hughes continued in office after Harding died and was succeeded by Coolidge, but resigned after Coolidge was elected to a full term. In 1922, June 30, he signed the Hughes–Peynado agreement, that ended the occupation of Dominican Republic by the United States (since 1916).^[14]

Various appointments

In 1907, Gov. Charles Evans Hughes became the first president of newly formed Northern Baptist Convention. He also served as President of the New York State Bar Association.

After leaving the State Department, he again rejoined his old partners at the Hughes firm, which included his son and future United States Solicitor General Charles E. Hughes, Jr., and was one of the nation's most sought-after advocates. From 1925 to 1930, for example, Hughes argued over 50 times before the U.S. Supreme Court. From 1926 to 1930, Hughes also served as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and as a judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague, Netherlands from 1928 to 1930. He was additionally a delegate to the Pan American Conference on Arbitration and Conciliation from 1928 to 1930. He was one of the co-founders in 1927 of the National Conference on Christians and Jews, now known as the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ), along with S. Parkes Cadman and others, to oppose the Ku Klux Klan, anti-Catholicism, and anti-Semitism in the 1920s and 1930s.^[15]

In 1928 conservative business interests tried to interest Hughes in the GOP presidential nomination of 1928 instead of Herbert Hoover. Hughes, citing his age, turned down the offer.

Chief Justice

Herbert Hoover, who had appointed Hughes' son as Solicitor General in 1929, appointed Hughes Chief Justice of the United States in 1930, in which capacity he served until 1941. Hughes replaced former President William Howard Taft, a fellow Republican who had also lost a presidential election to Woodrow Wilson (in 1912) and who, in 1910, had appointed Hughes to his first tenure on the Supreme Court.

His appointment was opposed by progressive elements in both parties who felt that he was too friendly to big business. Idaho Republican William E. Borah said on the United States Senate floor that confirming Hughes would constitute "placing upon the Court as Chief Justice one whose views are known upon these vital and important questions and whose views, in my opinion, however sincerely entertained, are not which ought to be incorporated in and made a permanent part of our legal and economic system."^[16] Nonetheless Hughes was confirmed as Chief Justice with a vote of 52 to 26.

In 1937 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to pack the Court with five additional justices, Hughes worked behind the scenes to defeat the effort, which failed in the Senate.^[17] He wrote the opinion for the Court in Near v. Minnesota 283 U.S. 697 (1931), which held that prior restraints against the press are unconstitutional. At first resisting President Roosevelt's New Deal and building a consensus of centrist members of the court, he used his influence to limit the liberal scope Roosevelt's changes. He was often aligned with Justices Louis Brandeis, Harlan Fiske Stone and Benjamin Cardozo in finding some New Deal measures to be Constitutional. Although he wrote the opinion invalidating the National Recovery Administration in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States 295 U.S. 495 (1935), he wrote the opinions for the Court in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. 301 U.S. 1 (1937),^[18] NLRB v. Friedman-Harry Marks Clothing Co.; 301 U.S. 58 (1937),^[19] and West Coast Hotel v. Parrish 300 U.S. 379 (1937)^[20] which approved some New Deal measures. Hughes supervised the move of the Court from its former quarters at the U.S. Capitol to the newly constructed Supreme Court building.

Hughes wrote twice as many constitutional opinions as any of his court's other members. "His opinions, in the view of one commentator, were concise and admirable, placing Hughes in the pantheon of great justices."^[21] His "remarkable intellectual and social gifts . . . made him a superb leader and administrator. He had a photographic memory that few, if any, of his colleagues could match. Yet he was generous, kind, and forebearing in an institution where egos generally come in only one size: extra large!"^[21]

Later life

For many years, he was a member of the Union League Club of New York and served as its president from 1917 to 1919. 

On August 27, 1948, Hughes died in Osterville, Massachusetts. His remains are interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York.^[22]

Tributes

• Hughes Hall, located at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas is a residence dorm.
• The Charles Evans Hughes House, now the Burmese ambassador's residence, in Washington, D.C. was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1972. Hughes lived in the home from 1930 until his death in 1948.
• Most his papers are in the collection of the manuscript division of the Library of Congress.^[23] However other items that could be involved in research are at various institutions around the country.^[24]
• Charles Evans Hughes Junior High School (of Woodland Hills, California, now closed) was named in his honor, as was the Hughes Range in Antarctica.
• Charles Evans Hughes High School (of New York City) was named in his honor. It was later renamed High School for the Humanities.
• Hughes Hall is a dormitory at the Cornell Law School, where he once taught.
• Charles Evans Hughes Middle School in Long Beach, California, was named in his honor.
• A bust length portrait of Hughes by the Swiss-born American portrait painter Adolfo Müller-Ury (1862–1947) is in the Michigan Historical Museum in Lansing, Michigan. It was accessioned by them in 1939-1940, but probably acquired earlier.
• The New York City Bar Association has a room named after Charles Evans Hughes. Two portraits of Mr. Hughes are hung in this room as well as one of his son, Charles Evans Hughes Jr.
• The Union League Club of New York, of which Hughes was once president, dedicated the Hughes Room in his honor featuring a portrait of Hughes.
• Hughes Court, an area of the Wriston Quadrangle at Brown University is named for him.

See also

References

Further reading

External links

• Grave of Charles Evans Hughes at Find a Grave
• "Mr. Hughes Goes to War" (An alternate history where Hughes is elected President of the United States in 1916)
• The Hughes Court at Supreme Court Historical Society.

Archives

• Judge Manuscript Information: Charles Evans Hughes. List of archives with documents via Judges of the United States Courts. Retrieved April 15, 2005.
• Archives at the Supreme Court Historical Society

Legal opinions as Chief Justice

• Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson, 283 U.S. 697 (1931).
• Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935).
• NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1 (1937).
• West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379 (1937)

Books

• Addresses of Charles Evans Hughes, 1906–1916; with an introduction