Edward Douglass White - The White Court, 1910-1921

The White Court, 1910-1921

In 1910, he was elevated by President William Howard Taft to the position of Chief Justice of the United States upon the death of Melville Fuller. At the time, it was a controversial appointment for two reasons. First, White was a Democrat while Taft was a Republican. The media of the day widely expected Taft to name Republican Justice Charles Evans Hughes to the post. Second, White was the first Associate Justice to be appointed Chief Justice since John Rutledge in 1795. Some historians believe that President Taft appointed White, who was 65 years old at the time and overweight, in the hope that White would not serve all that long and that Taft himself might someday be appointed—-which is just what happened eleven years later.

White was generally seen as one of the more conservative members of the court. He was the originator of the “Rule of Reason." However, White also wrote the decision upholding the constitutionality of the Adamson Act, which mandated a maximum eight-hour work day for railroad employees, in 1916. White wrote for a unanimous Court in Guinn v. United States (1915), which invalidated the Oklahoma and Maryland grandfather clauses (and, by extension, those in other Southern states) as "repugnant to the Fifteenth Amendment and therefore null and void." However, in practice the Southern states found other methods to disfranchise blacks which withstood Court scrutiny. In 1918, the Selective Draft Law Cases upheld the Selective Service Act of 1917, and more generally, upheld conscription in the United States, which Supreme Court Justice (and later President) William Howard Taft said was "one of his great opinions."

As Chief Justice, White swore in Presidents Woodrow Wilson (twice) and Warren G. Harding.

When he left the High Court, he was succeeded by William Howard Taft, making White the only Chief Justice to be followed by the President who appointed him.

Chief Justice White was one of thirteen Catholic justices – out of 111 total through the appointment of Justice Sonia Sotomayor – in the history of the Supreme Court.

He married Leita Montgomery Kent, the widow of Linden Kent, on November 6, 1894, in New York City.