Pierce Butler (justice) - Court Service

Court Service

As an Associate Justice, Butler vigorously opposed regulation of business and the implementation of welfare programs by the federal government (as unconstitutional). During the Great Depression, he ruled against the constitutionality of many "New Deal" laws— the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the National Recovery Administration— which had been supported by his fellow Democrat Franklin Roosevelt. This earned him a place among the so-called "Four Horsemen," which also included James Clark McReynolds, George Sutherland, and Willis Van Devanter. As a conservative commentator noted, Butler did not give up his seat willingly — other justices may have been forced out — but he had to be carried out of office.

He wrote the majority opinion (6-3) in United States v. Schwimmer, in which the Hungarian immigrant's application for citizenship was denied because of her candid refusal to take an oath to "take up arms" for her adopted country.

In Palko v. Connecticut, Butler was the lone dissenter on the court; the rest of the justices believed that a state was not restrained from trying a man a second time for the same crime. Butler believed this violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

He sided with the majority in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, holding unconstitutional an Oregon state law which prohibited parents from sending their children to private or religious schools.

In Buck v. Bell, Butler was the only Justice who dissented from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s opinion holding that the forced sterilization of an allegedly "feeble-minded" woman in Virginia was constitutional. Holmes believed that Butler's religion influenced his thinking in Buck, remarking that "Butler knows this is good law, I wonder whether he will have the courage to vote with us in spite of his religion.". Although Butler dissented in both Buck and Palko, he did not write a dissenting opinion in either case; the practice of a Justice's noting a dissent without opinion was much more common then than it would be in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Another consequential dissent was from the opinion expressed in Olmstead v. United States which upheld federal wiretapping. He took an expansive view of 4th Amendment protections. Conservapedia founder Andrew Schlafly stated he "proved to be perhaps the best Supreme Court Justice ever."