Lesser Known Chief Justices - US Supreme Court Quiz

Answer: The Senate did not confirm his nomination

John Jay, the first Chief Justice, resigned in June 1795 because he had been elected governor of New York. Rutledge, who had previously been an Associate Justice but had resigned to become Chief Justice of South Carolina, was appointed two days later by President Washington to take his place as a recess appointment.

However, before the Senate reconvened to vote on his nomination, he made speeches critical of a popular treaty with Great Britain. Thus, when it came time for his nomination to be voted on, it was defeated 14-10.

Every other Chief Justice through the end of the 20th century served at least 13 times as long as Rutledge.

While he was Chief Justice, only two cases were decided (back then the docket was smaller than today!) One of those was significant in that it allowed citizens of the United States also to possess citizenship in another country.

Rutledge had previously served as governor of South Carolina during the Revolutionary War and was one of the drafters of the Constitution.

Answer: New York v Connecticut

The case was actually a minor dispute over which state had the authority to grant ownership to a piece of land and would not have been significant except that it was the first Supreme Court case involving two states. Article 3 Section 2 of the Constitution states "In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction". So it was one of the rare instances where the Supreme Court was the first to try the case rather than acting as a court of appeals.

Ellsworth was actually Washington's third choice for the job. However, John Rutledge did not receive confirmation and William Cushing, an Associate Justice on the court declined. He served as Chief Justice for four years from 1796-1800 before retiring due to ill health (although he ended up living for almost seven years after his retirement). Interestingly enough, he sent his resignation letter from France where he was in the process of negotiating a treaty with Napoleon, something you don't see current Supreme Court justices doing.

Ellsworth had previously been a senator from Connecticut and was also one of the drafters of the Constitution.

Answer: Salmon P. Chase

I hope you were able to pull a $10,000 bill out of your wallet to look that one up!

Salmon Chase became Chief Justice during the Civil War after the death of Roger B. Taney. Chase served for nine years until his death in 1873. He presided over several reconstruction cases including Texas v White where it was ruled that from a legal standpoint the southern states had never seceded from the union.

Chase had been a staunch abolitionist prior to the Civil War and helped found both the Free Soil and Republican Parties. In the 1850s he served first as a senator from Ohio and then as the state's governor.

He also served as Secretary of the Treasury under Lincoln. It was while he was in this position that the US started printing paper money and started including the phrase "In God We Trust" on coins.

The Chase National Bank (later Chase Manhattan and JP Morgan Chase) was created four years after his death and named after him.

Samuel Freeman Miller, David Davis, and Stephen Johnson Field were Associate Justices during Chase's term as Chief Justice.

Answer: 250

Waite served as Chief Justice from 1874 to 1888, a particularly busy period in the courts history as cases evolving from Reconstruction were being heard along with many patent and copyright cases as technology rapidly advanced at the start of the last quarter of the century.

Unfortunately in the Reconstruction cases, the court did little to protect the rights and even the lives of blacks in southern states where Jim Crow laws were beginning to take root.

Waite was the first Chief Justice who had not previously held a significant elected or appointed office, although he was president of the Ohio constitutional convention in 1872. He was not President Grant's first choice for the position but other choices were either rejected by the Senate or simply turned down the nomination.

By the early 21st century the court normally accepted fewer than 100 cases a year to review.

Answer: Plessy v Ferguson

Plessy v Ferguson was the case which legitimized the doctrine of "separate but equal" allowing for states to provide separate railroad cars, schools, restrooms, and many other facilities for blacks so they wouldn't mix with whites. Unfortunately, while separate, the facilities were rarely equal with the facilities for whites being of much higher quality. This decision was overturned in 1954 by the famous Brown v Board of Education case.

Another famous case decided by his court was Pollock v Farmers' Loan & Trust which declared that income tax was unconstitutional. This decision led to the sixteenth amendment which explicitly allowed an income tax.

Fuller's term as Chief Justice from 1888-1910 was the third longest in the first 200 years since John Jay took office in 1789, behind only John Marshall and Roger B. Taney. Like his predecessor, Morrison Waite, he did not hold a major office prior to becoming Chief Justice.

Fuller began the practice where the justices would all shake hands prior to the start of a conference.

Answer: Voting rights

After the Civil War, many of the southern states passed literacy tests which required voters to answer very difficult questions in order to vote. However, they included so-called "grandfather clauses", which exempted people whose ancestor was eligible to vote prior to 1867; which was before the 15th amendment gave blacks the right to vote. This meant these literacy tests only applied to blacks and immigrants and were used to disenfranchise those voters.

Edward Douglass White was the first Chief Justice to be promoted directly from Associate Justice to Chief Justice. John Rutledge had been an Associate Justice but resigned four years before he became Chief Justice. White also served as a senator from Louisiana. He was the first Chief Justice from a state that seceded during the Civil War since John Marshall who was appointed over 100 years earlier.

White served as Chief Justice from 1910 until his death in 1921.

Answer: William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft had the unusual distinction of having appointed his predecessor Chief Justice while he was president.

One of the most well known cases while Taft was Chief Justice was Federal Baseball Club v National League where the Supreme Court decided that the Sherman Antitrust Act does not apply to Major League Baseball.

In addition to being president, Taft served as Secretary of War under Theodore Roosevelt. He was Chief Justice from 1921-1930

Answer: Both lost a presidential election to Woodrow Wilson

Taft lost the 1912 election to Wilson while Hughes was the 1916 Republican candidate who also lost to Wilson. Taft's loss saw him finish a distant third behind both Wilson and former president Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 with only eight electoral votes. Hughes, on the other hand, lost a very close election, 277-254 where Hughes would have won if he had been able to swing any one of the ten states with twelve or more votes that Wilson won.

Although Hughes was appointed by Herbert Hoover, he spent most of his term as Chief Justice with Franklin Roosevelt as president and presided over many cases involving Roosevelt's New Deal policies.

Hughes had originally been appointed to the court as an Associate Justice by none other than President Taft. He also served four years as Secretary of State under Harding and Coolidge and was governor of New York prior to his original Supreme Court appointment.

Hughes served as Chief Justice from 1930-1941. He was the first Chief Justice since Oliver Ellsworth to live a significant time after retiring from the court (slightly over seven years). Taft survived less than five weeks while every other Chief Justice since Ellsworth died in while in office.

Taft was from Ohio and attend Yale but was a Unitarian. Hughes was from New York, attended Madison, Brown, and Columbia Universities, and he was a Baptist.

Answer: Internment of Japanese-Americans

The internment of Japanese-Americans, including those who were American citizens, was one of the more controversial measures taken by the US government during World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In Korematsu v United States, the court upheld this policy by a 6-3 vote. One of the dissenters in this case, Robert Jackson, went on to become the lead prosecutor for the United States during the Nuremburg trials.

Stone was the second Chief Justice elevated directly from Associate Justice. Before he was appointed to the court he served as Attorney General under Calvin Coolidge. Although he was appointed by Coolidge he supported the legality of many of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs which may have been influential in Roosevelt's decision to promote him to Chief Justice.

His term as Chief Justice lasted from 1941 until his death in 1946.

Answer: False

Brown v Board of Education was originally heard by the Supreme Court in 1952 while Vinson was Chief Justice. The court was unable to come to a consensus and decided to rehear the case the following term. However, before the retrial occurred, Vinson suffered a fatal heart attack and his successor, Earl Warren, wrote the decision.

Vinson was appointed Chief Justice by Harry Truman in 1946 and served until his death in 1953. He was the last Chief Justice of the 20th century to be appointed by a president who was a Democrat, despite there being three more vacancies and twenty years where the Democrats held the presidency over the course of the rest of the century.

Vinson had previously served as a member of the US House of Representatives and was Secretary of the Treasury when he was appointed Chief Justice.