Judicial Management and Judicial Disinterest: The Achievements and Perils of Chief Justice William Howard Taft Robert Post William Howard Taft holds the significant distinction ofbeing the only person in the his tory ofthe nation to preside over two branches of the federal government. He was President from 1909 to 1913, and he was ChiefJustice of the United States from 1921 to 1930.’ This achievement ought to have secured Taft a prominent position within the history of the Court. YetTaft has drifted into almost com plete professional eclipse. Although familiar to specialists in legal history, Taft is no more known to the average lawyer or law student than are ChiefJustices White, Fuller, or Waite. Taft’s contemporary obscurity is remark able. When Taft died on March 8, 1930, the nation convulsed in an overpowering and spon taneouswave ofmourning. He was widelychar acterizedas “the mostbeloved ofAmericans,”2 and hailed by observers like Augustus Hand, then a federal district Judge in New York, as “the greatest figure as ChiefJustice since John Marshall.”3 Even Felix Frankfurter, certainly no admirer ofTaft’s jurisprudence, was moved to observe that “Few public men have evoked such spontaneous and warm affection fromthe pub lic as has Taft. ... He is a dear man—a true human.”4 This was a striking tribute to a man who had only eighteen years before been crushingly repudiated. Caught between Theodore Roosevelt’s New Nationalism and Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom, Taft was blasted as a reactionary, and managed to obtain only a hu miliating eight electoral votes in his 1912 cam paign forreelectionto the presidency. Taft took defeat graciously, however, and he quickly be came, in the famous phrase ofjournalistGeorge Harvey, “our worst licked and best loved Presi dent.”5 Although Taft had been known as the father ofthe labor injunction since his days as an Ohio state court judge, he mollified orga nized labor during World War I by assuming thejoint chairmanship (with Frank P. Walsh) of the National War Labor Board. The Board shocked industrial leaders not only by explic itly recognizing the right ofAmerican workers WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT 51 to unionize, but also by pledging official sup port for the right of employees to receive a “living wage.”6 Taft also transcended parti san politics by opposing the leaders of his own party in courageously and publicly championing Woodrow Wilson’s campaign to join the League of Nations. As a result, Harding’s nomination of Taft for the Chief Justiceship in July 1921 was greeted with “almost unanimous approval.”7 It was, as the The New York Times remarked, “a ‘come back’ unprecedented in American political annals.”8 We may ask, then, how this man, who, as Walter Lippmann’s New York World observed, retired “as Chief Justice with the enduring af fection of his countrymen,” with a “career” that “has no equal in our history,”9 could have slipped so rapidly into such deep professional oblivion. The short answer, I think, may be found in Time magazine’s pithy assessment of The administrative responsibilities of the chiefjusticeship became apparent to William H. Taft quickly after taking the oath of office on July 12. Two weeks after being sworn in, Taft learned that Deputy Clerk Henry McKenney had passed away, leaving no one authorized to issue official papers because the Clerk of Court, James D. Maher (pictured), had died on June 3. Told it was unneccessary to consult with the Associate Justices on summer recess, Taft unilaterally decided to appoint Assistant Clerk William R. Stansbury to fill the position. Taft’s resignation: “Outstanding decisions: none.”10 It is not, ofcourse, that Taft wrote few opin ions. Indeed, from October 1921 through July 1929, Taft authored 249 opinions forthe Court. The prodigious nature ofthis accomplishment can be seen by contrasting Taft’s output with that ofthe four other Justices who served con tinuously during those eight Terms: Holmes wrote 205 opinions forthe Court, Brandeis 193, McReynolds 172, and Van Devanter only 94.11 It is rather that Taft’s opinions were, as Holmes put it, “rather spongy.”12 Although Taft authored a good many opinions that were, within the context of his time, quite impor tant, his writing was...