John Rutledge - Chief Justice of The United States

Chief Justice of The United States

On June 28, 1795, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, having been elected Governor of New York, resigned from the Court. President Washington selected Rutledge to succeed Jay as the Court's chief justice. As the Senate was not in session at the time, Rutledge's recess appointment took effect immediately. He was commissioned as the second Chief Justice of the United States on June 30, 1795.

On July 16, 1795, Rutledge gave a highly controversial speech denouncing the Jay Treaty with Great Britain. He reportedly said in the speech "that he had rather the President should die than sign that puerile instrument"– and that he "preferred war to an adoption of it." Rutledge's speech against the Jay Treaty cost him the support of many in the Washington Administration, which supported the treaty, and in the Senate, which subsequently ratified it by a two-thirds majority and which would soon be debating and voting on his nomination to the Supreme Court.

Two cases were decided while Rutledge held his recess appointment (before his formal nomination). In United States v. Peters, the Court ruled that federal district courts had no jurisdiction over crimes committed against Americans in international waters. In Talbot v. Janson, the Court held that a citizen of the United States did not waive all claims to U.S. citizenship by either renouncing citizenship of an individual state, or by becoming a citizen of another country. The Rutledge Court thus established an important precedent for multiple citizenship in the United States.

By the time of his formal nomination to the Court on December 10, 1795, Rutledge's reputation was in tatters and support for his nomination had faded. Rumors of mental illness and alcohol abuse swirled around him, concocted largely by the Federalist press. His words and actions in response to the Jay Treaty were used as evidence of his continued mental decline. The Senate rejected his appointment on December 15, 1795 by a vote of 14–10. This was the first time that the Senate had rejected a presidential recess appointment. Of the 15 recess appointments to the Supreme Court, it remains the only time it has rejected a recess appointment of an individual to the Supreme Court.

Though the Senate remained in session through June 1, 1796, Rutledge resigned from the Court on December 28, 1795. Regarding Rutledge and the Senate's rejection of his Supreme Court nomination, then Vice President John Adams, in a letter to his wife Abigail, wrote that it "gave me pain for an old friend, though I could not but think he deserved it. Chief Justices must not go to illegal Meetings and become popular orators in favor of Sedition, nor inflame the popular discontents which are ill founded, nor propagate Disunion, Division, Contention and delusion among the people." The comments of Adams, a Federalist, foreshadowed his administration's Sedition Act, which attempted to suppress public criticism of Federalist policies.