Editing Howell E. Jackson (section)

=== ''Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.'' ===
Scholar Irving Schiffman maintains that Jackson's name would have been "buried in [the] coffin of historical neglect" were it not for his participation in a single case: ''[[Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.]]''<ref name=":4" />{{Rp|334}} ''Pollock'' involved a challenge to a provision of the 1894 [[Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act]] that had imposed a two percent [[Income tax|personal income tax]] on all revenue over four thousand dollars.<ref name=":16">{{Cite book|last1=McManus|first1=Edgar J.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cOyrAgAAQBAJ|title=Liberty and Union: A Constitutional History of the United States, concise edition|last2=Helfman|first2=Tara|publisher=[[Routledge]]|year=2014|isbn=978-1-136-75716-7|location=New York|language=en|access-date=April 8, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210426174822/https://books.google.com/books?id=cOyrAgAAQBAJ|archive-date=April 26, 2021|url-status=live}}</ref>{{Rp|285}} According to the plaintiff, the law imposed a [[direct tax]] without apportioning it among the states, in violation of [[Article One of the United States Constitution#Clauses 4–7: Apportionment of direct taxes|a provision of the Constitution]].<ref name=":16" />{{Rp|285}} In practice, it would be impossible to apportion such taxes among the states, so a ruling on that basis would doom all federal income taxation.<ref name=":15">{{Cite book|last=Ely|first=James W.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NDcMCAAAQBAJ|title=The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller, 1888–1910|publisher=[[University of South Carolina Press]]|year=1995|isbn=978-1-57003-018-5|location=Columbia, SC|pages=|author-link=James W. Ely Jr.|access-date=March 3, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181130183805/https://books.google.com/books?id=NDcMCAAAQBAJ|archive-date=November 30, 2018|url-status=live}}</ref>{{Rp|118}} Jackson was ill, but the eight remaining justices heard the case. They struck down certain other provisions of the act but split 4–4 on the constitutionality of the income tax.<ref name=":16" />{{Rp|285––286}} When Jackson suggested he could return to Washington, the Court agreed to rehear the case to make a more conclusive ruling on the income tax's legality.<ref name=":4" />{{Rp|335–337}}

Because the other eight justices had been evenly split, it was assumed that Jackson's vote would determine the case.<ref name=":4" />{{Rp|338}} Experts were uncertain how he would rule: his Southern background suggested he might support the tax, but his pro-business judicial views meant he might be inclined to strike it down.<ref name=":10" />{{Rp|118}} During the three days of arguments, lawyers aimed their contentions at the violently coughing Jackson, often ignoring other justices in their zeal to persuade the swing vote.<ref name=":4" />{{Rp|338}} But when the ruling finally came down on May&nbsp;20, 1895, Jackson was in dissent.<ref name=":10" />{{Rp|118}} A five-justice majority led by Chief Justice Fuller ruled the tax to be unconstitutional, declaring it was an impermissible unapportioned direct tax.<ref name=":16" />{{Rp|286}} Jackson joined Brown and justices [[John Marshall Harlan]] and [[Edward Douglass White]] in dissenting from the Court's holding.<ref name=":4" />{{Rp|347}} In an impassioned opinion, he wrote "this decision is, in my judgment, the most disastrous blow ever struck at the constitutional power of Congress".<ref name=":10" />{{Rp|118–119}} Numerous coughing fits interrupted Jackson's ardent turns of phrase, stopping the seriously ill justice several times during his forty-five-minute delivery of the dissent.<ref name=":4" />{{Rp|348}}

Many have attempted to determine how Jackson ended up in the minority.<ref name=":4" />{{Rp|347}} The apparent reason is that one justice switched his vote.<ref name=":1" />{{Rp|243}} Newspapers at the time identified [[George Shiras Jr.|George Shiras]] as the "vacillating Justice"; biographer Willard King notes that "great obloquy was heaped on him" by outlets that opposed the Court's decision.<ref name=":02">{{Cite book|last=King|first=Willard L.|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112100455523&view=1|title=Melville Weston Fuller, Chief Justice of the United States, 1888–1910|publisher=[[Macmillan Publishers|Macmillan]]|year=1950|isbn=|location=New York|pages=|access-date=March 3, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124135155/https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112100455523&view=1|archive-date=January 24, 2021|url-status=live}}</ref>{{Rp|218}} While this suggestion continues to have its adherents,<ref name=":10" />{{Rp|118}} three sources denied Shiras's vote changed.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|218}} Others have argued that [[Horace Gray]] or [[David Josiah Brewer|David Brewer]] changed their votes, but those proposals are difficult to reconcile with primary sources.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|219}} The remaining possibility is that no justice changed his vote.<ref name=":15" />{{Rp|120}} According to this theory, five justices were averse to the tax from the beginning, but they were unable to unite behind one legal theory initially.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|220}} Jackson's dissent eventually won vindication from the court of history: the [[Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Sixteenth Amendment]] passed eighteen years after ''Pollock'' revised the Constitution to authorize an income tax.<ref name=":14" />{{Rp|217}}