Introduction

Abstract

Introduction Melvin I. Urofsky We begin our fortieth year ofpublication with pride and optimism. Pride that over the years we have been able to bring to our readers interesting articles about many dif­ ferent aspects of U.S. Supreme Court history written by some ofthe leading scholars in the field. Optimism that we can continue to do this in the years to come. This issue suggests that our optimism is not unfounded. Historians have long puzzled over John Jay and his decision to step down as Chief Justice, and then a few years later to decline an offer to re-establish him in that position. A leading figure of the Revolutionary period, a statesman,jurist, a co-author ofTheFederalist Papers, governor of New York, a diplomat, and our nation’s first ChiefJustice, there is no question that his place in American history is honored and secure. He failed, however, to see the opportunity that leading the High Court could provide to help shape the new nation’s destiny. When he resigned, he claimed that the judiciary would never be an important part of the government. Matthew Van Hook explores Jay’s ambivalence about the Court, and tries to make sense of it in light of Jay’s own ambitions and talents. Mr. Van Hook is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University ofNotre Dame. One can hardly pick up the newspaper these days, nor turn on the radio or television news, without another story about immigra­ tion. Historians are well aware that immigra­ tion did notjust become a contentious issue in the past few years. During the Progressive Era there was a great national debate over the wisdom of continuing to allow unrestricted numbers of people, especially those from eastern and southern Europe, to enter the country. The debate finally ended in the 1924 statute severely limiting migration into the United States. In the nineteenth century the debate involved those who came from China, many of whom helped build the transconti­ nental railroad. A question then, as now, is who had the power to regulate that migration—the states or the federal government. While we pay little attention to those decisions now, the Supreme Court heard several cases on the matter, and whether there was a federal police power that could be called into service. Adam Carrington, v vi JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY an assistant professor of politics at Hillsdale College, looks at one of the most important Justices of the latter nineteenth century, Stephen J. Field, and his evolving views on this subject. When legal scholarsplay the game of “Who Are the Great Justices?” it is fairly certain to say that William Rufus Day is never mentioned. Day, appointed by Theodore Roosevelt in the spring of 1903, served on the Court until his resignation in November 1922, nearly two full decades, and in that time heard hundreds of important cases. He is remembered, if at all, as the author ofthe majority opinion in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918). Yet Jesse Bair thinks Day’s service is underappreciatedandthat he deserves a re-evaluation. Mr. Bair, a student of Professor Brad Snyder while at the University of Wisconsin Law School, won the Society’s Hughes-Gossett Student Prize for 2014 with this article. He is now an associate at the Madison, Wisconsin, office of Perkins Cole LLP. We now come to the second installment of Barry Cushman’s “The Clerks of the Four Horsemen,” dealing with those men serving George Sutherland and Pierce Butler. We know farmore about the clerks ofthe “great Justices,” such as Holmes and Brandeis, who often wrote about the wonderful year they spent with “their” Justice. The diary of a frustrated McReynolds clerk sent Professor Cushman— who is the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor at Notre Dame Law School—on a quest to see how other clerks fared with these four, particularly in theirpost-clerkship careers. Finally serendipity—as it often does— played a role in securing our last article. I was one ofthe speakers at a symposium sponsored by his clerks held at the Court last spring to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary ofWilliam O. Douglas’s appointment to the Bench. The keynote...