Editing Morrison Waite (section)

==Chief Justice of the United States, 1874–1888==
===Nomination===
[[File:Waite Chief Justice Nomination.jpg|thumb|alt= |Waite's Chief Justice nomination]]
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 [[United States Senator|Senator]] [[Roscoe Conkling]] of [[New York (state)|New York]], who declined.

After ruling out a promotion of a sitting [[Associate Justice of the United States|Associate Justice]] to Chief (despite much lobbying from the legal community for Justice [[Samuel Freeman Miller]]), Grant was determined to appoint an outsider as Chief Justice and offered the Chief Justiceship to senators [[Oliver Morton]] of [[Indiana]] and [[Timothy Howe]] of [[Wisconsin]], then to his [[United States Secretary of State|Secretary of State]], [[Hamilton Fish]]. He finally submitted his nomination of [[Attorney General of the United States|Attorney General]] [[George Henry Williams|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 [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrat]] and former Attorney General [[Caleb Cushing]], but withdrew it after Republican Senators alleged Civil War-era connections between Cushing and the [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] President [[Jefferson Davis]]. Finally, after persistent lobbying from Ohioans, including [[United States Secretary of the Interior|Interior Secretary]] [[Columbus Delano]], on January 19, 1874, Grant nominated the little-known Waite. He was notified of his nomination by a telegram.<ref>{{harvnb|Kens|Johnson|2012|pp=1–2}}</ref>

The nomination was not well received in political circles. The former [[United States Secretary of the Navy|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 [[Stagecoach|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.<ref name='fedjudcenter'>{{cite news | title=Morrison Waite | date=December 12, 2009 | publisher=Federal Judicial Center | url=http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/nGetInfo?jid=2474&cid=999&ctype=na&instate=na | access-date=May 21, 2012 | archive-date=May 7, 2012 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120507144937/http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/nGetInfo?jid=2474&cid=999&ctype=na&instate=na | url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Oyez"/> Waite took the oaths of office on March 4, 1874.<ref name="Oyez"/><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/oath/oathsofthechiefjustices2009.aspx |title=Oaths of Office Taken by the Chief Justices |publisher=Supreme Court of the United States |access-date=May 22, 2012 |archive-date=June 6, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120606034351/http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/oath/oathsofthechiefjustices2009.aspx |url-status=live }}</ref>

===Tenure===
[[File:Morrison_waite_from_harpers.png|thumb|alt= |Waite's portrait as in [[Harper's Weekly]], 1890]]
{{Further|Waite Court}}

As Chief Justice, Waite never became a significant intellectual force on the Supreme Court. But his managerial and social skill, "especially his good humor and sensitivity to others, helped him to maintain a remarkably harmonious and productive court."<ref name="Ohiojudicial">{{Cite web|url=http://www.ohiojudicialcenter.gov/m_r_waite.asp|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721173612/http://www.ohiojudicialcenter.gov/m_r_waite.asp|url-status=dead|title=Grand Concourse, The Ohio Judicial Center, Supreme Court of Ohio|archivedate=July 21, 2011}}</ref>  During Waite's tenure, the Court 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.<ref name="Ohiojudicial"/>

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.<ref name="Ohiojudicial"/>  These opinions influenced Supreme Court jurisprudence well into the 20th century.<ref name="Oyez">{{cite web |url=https://www.oyez.org/justices/morrison_r_waite |title=Morrison R. Waite |publisher=[[Oyez.org]] |access-date=May 22, 2012 |archive-date=May 19, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120519170705/http://oyez.org/justices/morrison_r_waite |url-status=live }}</ref>

In the cases that grew out of the [[American Civil War]] and [[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction]], and especially in those that involved the interpretation of the [[Reconstruction Amendments]], i.e. the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth]], [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth]] and [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fifteenth amendment]]s, Waite sympathized with the court's general tendency to interpret these amendments narrowly. In ''[[United States v. Cruikshank]]'', the court struck down the [[Enforcement Act]], ruling that the states had to be relied on to protect citizens from attack by other private citizens.

<blockquote>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 [[False imprisonment|falsely imprison]] or murder within a State, than it would be to punish for false imprisonment or murder itself.</blockquote>

He concluded that "We may suspect that race was the cause of the hostility but is it not so averred."

Thus, the court overturned the convictions of three men accused of massacring at least 105 blacks in the [[Colfax massacre]] at the [[Grant Parish, Louisiana]], courthouse on Easter 1873. Their convictions under the [[Enforcement Act]] were thrown out not because the statutes were unconstitutional, but because the indictments under which the men were charged were infirm because they failed to allege specifically that the murders were committed on account of the victims' race.<ref name="Ohiojudicial"/>

Waite believed that white moderates should set the rules of racial relations in the South. But, in reality, those states were not prepared to protect African Americans. They did not prosecute most [[lynching]]s or [[paramilitary]] attacks against blacks. The majority of the Court and the people outside the South were tired of the bitter racial strife related to Reconstruction. In the 1870s, white Democrats regained power in southern legislatures; they passed [[Jim Crow laws]] suppressing blacks as second-class citizens. After years of elections surrounded by fraud and violence to suppress black voting, from 1890 to 1908 (after Waite's death) all the Democrat-dominated southern state legislatures passed new constitutions or amendments that [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disfranchised]] most African Americans and many poor whites in the South. Well into the 1960s, these laws excluded those groups from the political system.

Waite's social and political orientation was also 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 [[voting rights|franchise]]. Nonetheless, Waite sympathized with the women's rights movement and supported the admission of women to the Supreme Court bar.<ref name="Ohiojudicial"/>

In his opinion in ''[[Munn v. Illinois]]'' (1877), one of six [[wikt:granger|Granger]] cases involving Populist-inspired state legislation to fix maximum rates chargeable by grain elevators and railroads, Waite wrote that when a business or private property was "affected with a public interest", it was subject to governmental regulation. Thus, the Court ruled against charges that Granger laws encroached upon private property rights without due process of law and conflicted with the Fourteenth Amendment. Later, this opinion was often regarded as a milestone in the growth of federal government regulation.<ref name="ariens">{{cite web |url=http://www.michaelariens.com/ConLaw/justices/waite.htm |title=Supreme Court Justices Morrison Waite (1816–1888) |first1=Michael |last1=Ariens |publisher=Michael Ariens website |access-date=May 22, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120206211026/http://www.michaelariens.com/ConLaw/justices/waite.htm |archive-date=February 6, 2012 |df=mdy-all }}</ref> In particular, [[New Deal]]ers in the Franklin Roosevelt administration looked to ''Munn v. Illinois'' for guidance in interpreting due process, as well as the Commerce and Contract Clauses.{{citation needed|date=February 2016}}

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 ''[[Juilliard v. Greenman]]'') (1883). Among the most important opinions he personally wrote were the [[Enforcement Act]] Cases (1875), the [[Sinking Fund Cases]] (1878), the [[Railroad Commission Cases]] (1886) and the [[Telephone Cases]] (1887).

In 1876, amid speculation about a third term for President Grant, who had been tainted by scandals, some Republicans turned to Waite. They believed he was a better presidential nominee for the Republican Party. However, Waite refused, announcing "my duty [i]s 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."{{citation needed|date=September 2014}} In the aftermath of the [[presidential election of 1876]], Waite refused to sit on the [[Electoral Commission (United States)|Electoral Commission]] that decided the electoral votes of [[Florida]] because of his close friendship with GOP presidential nominee [[Rutherford B. Hayes]] as well as being a Yale College classmate of Democratic presidential nominee [[Samuel J. Tilden]].

As Chief Justice, Waite swore in Presidents [[Rutherford Hayes]], [[James Garfield]], [[Chester A. Arthur]] and [[Grover Cleveland]]. After suffering a breakdown, probably due to overwork, Waite refused to retire. Almost to the moment of his death, he continued to draft opinions and lead the Court.<ref name="Ohiojudicial"/>

===Role in corporate personhood controversy===
{{see also|Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission}}
In 1885, S. W. Sanderson, who was the Chief Legal Advisor for the Southern Pacific Railroad, decided to sue Santa Clara County in California because it was trying to regulate the railroad's activity.  His claim, in part, was that because a railroad was a '[[person]]' under the Constitution, local governments couldn't '[[Discrimination|discriminate]]' against it by having different laws and taxes in different places.

When ''[[Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company]]'', {{ussc|118|394|1886}}, came before the Court, Sanderson asserted that '[[Corporate personhood|corporate persons]]' should be treated the same as 'natural (or human) persons.' and although the Court specifically did not rule on it, the Reporter of Decisions, [[Bancroft Davis|John Chandler Bancroft Davis]], inserted the following [[dictum]] in the headnotes:<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7FRr5ya2ka8C|title=Everyman's Constitution: Historical Essays on the Fourteenth Amendment, the "Conspiracy Theory," and American Constitutionalism|last=Graham|first=Howard Jay|date=May 31, 2013|publisher=Wisconsin Historical Society|isbn=9780870206351|pages=567|language=en|access-date=August 6, 2016|archive-date=December 28, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191228120907/https://books.google.com/books?id=7FRr5ya2ka8C|url-status=live}}</ref>

<blockquote>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.<ref>118 U.S. 394 (1886) – Official court Syllabus in the United States Reports</ref></blockquote>

Before publication, Davis wrote a letter to Waite, dated May 26, 1886, to make sure his headnote was correct, to which Waite replied:

<blockquote>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.<sup>[[Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.|[4]]]</sup></blockquote>

Hence this ''dictum'' in the headnote and the Waite reply changed the course of history and how [[Corporate personhood debate|corporations came to have the legal rights of a human person]].

[[Thom Hartmann|Thomas Hartmann]], in his book ''Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and Theft of Human Rights'', has the following to say:<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.thomhartmann.com/unequal-protection/excerpt-theft|title=The Theft of Human Rights, chapter excerpt from Unequal Protection|date=February 11, 2011|language=en-US|access-date=August 6, 2016|archive-date=July 2, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160702122834/http://www.thomhartmann.com/unequal-protection/excerpt-theft|url-status=live}}</ref>

<blockquote>In these two sentences (according to the conventional wisdom), Waite weakened the kind of democratic republic the original authors of the Constitution had envisioned, and set the stage for the future worldwide damage of our environmental, governmental, and cultural commons. The plutocracy that had arisen with the East India Company in 1600, and been fought back by America's Founders, had gained a tool that was to allow them, in the coming decades, to once again gain control of most of North America, and then the world. Ironically, of the 307 Fourteenth Amendment cases brought before the Supreme Court in the years between his proclamation and 1910, only 19 dealt with African Americans: 288 were suits brought by corporations seeking the rights of natural persons.</blockquote>