Edward Terry Sanford

(b. Knoxville, Tenn., 23 July 1865; d. Washington, D.C., 8 Mar. 1930; interred Greenwood Cemetery, Knoxville), associate justice, 1923–1930. Born a few months after the end of the Civil War, Edward Terry Sanford was influenced during his formative years by his wealthy southern family and its close New England ties. Sanford was educated extensively at both southern and northern schools, earning undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Tennessee and from Harvard. This background enhanced a significant personality trait in Sanford—that of balancing interests. Following completion of his law degree at Harvard, Sanford studied abroad before returning to Tennessee to practice law.

Sanford's pre‐Court career included private law practice in Tennessee (1890–1907), lecturer in law at the University of Tennessee (1898–1907), special assistant to the attorney general of the United States (1906), assistant attorney general (1907), and federal district judge for eastern and middle Tennessee (1908–1923). His nomination to the United States Supreme Court in 1923 was secured by the lobbying efforts of Chief Justice William H. Taft and Attorney General Harry Daugherty who urged President Warren G. Harding to select Sanford because of his lower federal court experience and his cosmopolitan education. As a southern Republican Sanford was acceptable to Harding, who had received political support in the South.

Sanford's greatest impact on American constitutional law came in the area of civil liberties and involved the establishment of the incorporation doctrine. Originally the guarantees to the Bill of Rights applied only at the federal level. The controversy leading to the Civil War demonstrated that all states did not guarantee personal, fundamental liberties. The Fourteenth Amendment purported to do this. The extent of this guarantee was tested during the early twentieth century when state and federal authorities reacted to political unrest with repressive laws. In a series of cases the Supreme Court had to balance both state and national police power against individual rights.

In this setting Justice Sanford articulated this incorporation doctrine in two major cases. In Gitlow v. New York (1925) Sanford, writing for the Court, included dicta stating that the First Amendment's freedom of speech and press clauses were fundamental to personal liberty and protected from state infringement. Although the holding sustained the conviction of a publisher whose pamphlets urged violent overthrow of government, Sanford's dicta had major significance. The incorporation doctrine would use the liberty guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment against state action to extend the rights listed in the Bill of Rights. Sanford further enunciated the doctrine two years later in Fiske v. Kansas (1927), where, in speaking for the Court, he upheld a defense invoking the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee the federal right of free speech against a state criminal anarchy statute. (See Speech and the Press.)

More highly visible justices like Holmes and Brandeis overshadowed Sanford in life, while the fact that he died on the same day as Chief Justice Taft obscured him in death.

— Alice Fleetwood Bartee

• Born: July 23, 1865, Knoxville, Tenn.
• Education: University of Tennessee, B.A., 1883; Harvard, A.B., 1884, M.A., 1889; Harvard Law School, LL.B., 1889
• Previous government service: special assistant to the U.S. attorney general, 1906–7; assistant U.S. attorney general, 1907–8; federal judge, U.S. District Court for the Middle and Eastern Districts of Tennessee, 1908–23
• Appointed by President Warren G. Harding Jan. 24, 1923; replaced Mahlon Pitney, who retired
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Jan. 29, 1923, by a voice vote; served until Mar. 8, 1930
• Died: Mar. 8, 1930, Washington, D.C.

Edward Terry Sanford served only seven years on the Supreme Court, after 15 years of service as a federal district judge in Tennessee. His one notable achievement came in the area of constitutional rights. Writing for the Court in Gitlow v. New York (1925), Justice Sanford denied free speech and press rights to a publisher who advocated violent overthrow of the government. However, he also wrote that the 1st Amendment freedoms of speech and press “are among the fundamental personal rights and liberties protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the states.”

Two years later, in Fiske v. Kansas (1927), Justice Sanford wrote the opinion for the Court when it overturned, for the first time, a state law on grounds that it violated the 1st and 14th Amendments to the Constitution in denying an individual his freedom of speech. Thus, Justice Sanford laid the foundation for the later Court decisions to “incorporate” most of the Bill of Rights into the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, thereby prohibiting state governments from violating the Bill of Rights.

See also Gitlow v. New York; Incorporation doctrine

An important influence on the development of civil liberties, Edward Terry Sanford served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1923 to 1930. Sanford was a native of Tennessee with a cosmopolitan education, and before serving on the Court, he had a private law practice, served in the Justice Department, and was a federal district judge in his home state for fourteen years. While on the Court, Sanford's views were largely moderate, and in his lifetime, he was overshadowed by his highly visible contemporaries. Nonetheless, Sanford's opinions on civil liberties helped advance the guarantees of the Bill of Rights: in two major opinions delivered in the 1920s, he laid the groundwork for modern Supreme Court decisions that restrict the power of states to limit First Amendment rights to freedom of speech.

Sanford was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on July 23, 1865, the son of a lumber and construction millionaire. He earned four degrees from the University of Tennessee and Harvard, and studied languages in France and Germany. At Harvard Law School, he distinguished himself as the editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude. He began practicing law in Tennessee in the 1890s. He then lectured in law at the University of Tennessee from 1898 to 1906 before moving to Washington, D.C., for his first federal job.

Sanford's federal law career began in prosecution and rapidly took him to the federal bench. He joined the Justice Department in 1906 as a special assistant prosecutor, and a year later he was made an assistant attorney general. By 1908 Sanford returned to Tennessee as a federal district judge, a position he held until 1923. His specialties were bankruptcy and equity cases. On the bench he developed a reputation for open-mindedness, fairness, and leniency, at times reversing his own decisions. He was highly driven and nervously energetic, and would pace and chain-smoke in his chambers while considering his busy docket.

In 1923 Sanford's nomination to the Supreme Court came at the behest of his friends, Chief Justice William Howard Taft and Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty. The two men convinced President Warren G. Harding of Sanford's breadth of education and varied experience, which included service on the League of Nations. The nomination succeeded easily in the Senate, and Sanford sat on the Court for seven years until his death in 1930. He wrote 130 opinions, many of them addressing issues related to government, business, and especially bankruptcy.

Although neglected by history because of the accomplishments of his celebrated contemporaries, Sanford made a major contribution in the area of civil liberties. In particular, he helped develop the so-called incorporation doctrine— the Supreme Court's view that the Bill of Rights applies not only to the federal government but also, in large part, to the states. During much of the nineteenth century, states conferred fewer rights upon their citizens than those extended by the federal Bill of Rights, even after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. With the intervention of the Supreme Court, this began to change at the turn of the century. In the mid-1920s, Sanford helped effect the change in two important cases concerning freedom of speech.

The first case dealt with a state's power to control the press. In Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, 45 S. Ct. 625, 69 L. Ed. 1138 (1925), the Court considered New York's conviction of a leftist author under the state's anarchy law of 1902. The broader question for the Court was, Should the First Amendment be extended to the states? Sanford's opinion upheld the conviction because, in the Court's view, states should be free to prosecute citizens who advocate violent overthrow of government. But on the broader question of the Bill of Rights, Sanford wrote that the First Amendment applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. Gitlow served as the foundation for subsequent cases in which the Court would strike down state laws that violated the First Amendment. In 1927 the Court upheld a defense based on the doctrine enunciated in Gitlow in Fiske v. Kansas, 274 U.S. 380, 47 S. Ct. 655, 71 L. Ed. 1108. In his opinion, Sanford underscored that states must guarantee First Amendment rights.

Throughout his tenure on the Court, Sanford voted consistently with Chief Justice Taft. Sanford died at age sixty-four on March 8, 1930—the same day that Taft died.

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Edward Terry Sanford
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
In office February 19, 1923 – March 8, 1930
Nominated by	Warren G. Harding
Preceded by	Mahlon Pitney
Succeeded by	Owen Josephus Roberts
Born	July 23, 1865
Died	March 8, 1930 (aged 64)

Edward Terry Sanford (July 23, 1865 – March 8, 1930) was an American jurist who served on the United States Supreme Court.

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, Sanford received a B.A. and a Ph.B. from the University of Tennessee in 1883, a B.A. from Harvard University in 1885, an M.A. from Harvard University in 1889, and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School in 1889. He was in private practice in Knoxville, Tennessee from 1890 to 1907, and was a lecturer at the University of Tennessee School of Law from 1898 to 1907. Sanford first served in the government as a special assistant to the Attorney General of the United States from 1905 to 1907, and then as Assistant Attorney General in 1907 under President Theodore Roosevelt.

On May 14, 1908, Roosevelt nominated Sanford to a seat on the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee and the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee vacated by Charles D. Clark. Sanford was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 18, 1908, and received his commission the same day. Upon the advice of Sanford's friend, Chief Justice William Howard Taft, President Warren Harding nominated Sanford to the Supreme Court on January 24, 1923, to the seat vacated by Mahlon Pitney. Sanford was confirmed by the Senate, and received his commission, on January 29, 1923. He served on the Court until his death, in Washington, D.C., which coincidentally occurred on the same day as that of the recently-retired Taft.

Sanford wrote 130 opinions during his seven years on the Court, including the majority opinion in Gitlow v. New York, which suggested in dicta that the free speech protections of the First Amendment applied to the states, and Okanogan Indians v. United States, which upheld the power of the President's "pocket veto".

He was also an active member of Civitan International.^[1]

Legal offices
Preceded by Mahlon Pitney	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States February 19, 1923 – March 8, 1930	Succeeded by Owen Josephus Roberts

Supreme Court of the United States

The Taft Court Chief Justice: William Howard Taft (1921–1930) 1923–1925: J. McKenna | O.W. Holmes | W. Van Devanter | J.C. McReynolds | L.D. Brandeis | Geo. Sutherland | P. Butler | E.T. Sanford 1925–1930: O.W. Holmes | W. Van Devanter | J.C. McReynolds | L.D. Brandeis | Geo. Sutherland | P. Butler | E.T. Sanford | H.F. Stone The Hughes Court Chief Justice: Charles Evans Hughes (1930–1941) Feb–Mar 1930: O.W. Holmes | W. Van Devanter | J.C. McReynolds | L.D. Brandeis | Geo. Sutherland | P. Butler | E.T. Sanford | H.F. Stone

Sources

• Edward Terry Sanford at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.

Notes

1. ^ Leonhart, James Chancellor (1962). The Fabulous Octogenarian. Baltimore Maryland: Redwood House, Inc.. p. 277. 

Persondata
NAME	Sanford, Edward Terry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	United States federal judge
DATE OF BIRTH	July 23, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH	Knoxville, Tennessee
DATE OF DEATH	March 8, 1930
PLACE OF DEATH	Washington, District of Columbia

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