George Shiras, Jr.

(b. Pittsburgh, Pa., 26 January 1832; d. Pittsburgh, Pa., 2 August 1924; interred Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh), associate justice, 1892–1903. George Shiras, Jr., was an obscure but nonetheless important justice in determining winning blocs on the Court and designating accepted constitutional interpretations. His career demonstrated the impact that background variables of family position, educational experience, and pre‐Court career can have on judicial attitudes.

The son of a wealthy, retired brewery merchant turned gentleman farmer, Shiras was raised to respect property and business entrepreneurship. Educated at Yale College, Shiras also spent a short time at the law school there. Throughout the Civil War he left military service to his brothers, concentrating instead on his expanding, lucrative corporate law practice. He refused positions in public service, rejecting a senatorial nomination in 1881 on the grounds that it would make him a pawn of Pennsylvania's Republican party machine.

Although Shiras lacked both judicial and public service experience, he was nevertheless nominated to the bench of the United States Supreme Court in July 1892 by President Benjamin Harrison. Two factors were critical in his selection: first, he was from the same geographic section as his predecessor on the Court; and second, he had demonstrated independence of the anti‐Harrison faction of the Pennsylvania Republican party.

Shiras brought to the Court a professional style and a social and economic ideology that shaped his and the Court's constitutional positions from 1892 to 1903. During this time the Court expanded judicial review of socioeconomic legislation through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Shiras's lawyerly approach to case facts and precedent meant that he did not always agree with the bloc of ultraconservative justices dedicated to the establishment of laissez‐faire economics through strict judicial review of state and national progressive reform laws (see Laissez‐Faire Constitutionalism). Thus in Brass v. North Dakota (1894) Shiras produced a liberal opinion upholding state police power to regulate business. Shiras's social and economic background, however, appeared directly in a long line of conservative decisions from United States v. E. C. Knight (1895) to Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897) that struck down national and state regulatory laws. In these cases Shiras voted to restrict the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and to use the freedom of contract doctrine to annul labor and other social legislation.

Identified by history as the justice who made the Sixteenth Amendment necessary, Shiras's legal reputation has suffered undeservedly. He was accused of having “Shirased,” that is, torpedoed, the most promising reform measure of the 1890s, the income tax. While it was true that he was one of the five justices voting to strike down the income tax in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895), Shiras himself was not apparently the pivotal vote. And this focus has obscured Shiras's liberal civil liberties decisions where he adopted a consistent due process approach and, as in Wong Wing v. United States (1896), protested denial of basic rights to individuals.

— Alice Fleetwood Bartee

• Born: Jan. 26, 1832, Pittsburgh, Pa.
• Education: Ohio University, 1849–51; Yale College, B.A., 1853; studied law at Yale and privately
• Previous government service: none
• Appointed by President Benjamin Harrison July 19, 1892, replaced Joseph P. Bradley, who died
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate July 26, 1892, by a voice vote; retired Feb. 23, 1903
• Died: Aug. 2, 1924, Pittsburgh, Pa.

George Shiras, Jr., was a successful lawyer before his appointment to the Supreme Court. However, he had no prior experience in government service, unlike all other Supreme Court justices.

Justice Shiras strongly supported property rights and economic liberty. Thus, he voted to strike down or limit federal and state regulations of businesses in the cases of United States v. E. C. Knight (1895) and Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897). In Wong Wing v. United States (1896), however, Justice Shiras wrote for the Court in protecting the rights of illegal aliens against unduly harsh punishments that disregarded 5th and 6th Amendment rights of due process and trial by jury.

Sources

• Winfield Shiras, Justice George Shiras, Jr. of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1953)

George Shiras, Jr., served on the U.S. Supreme Court as an associate justice from 1892 to 1903. Plucked by political necessity at the age of sixty from his highly successful law practice, Shiras, who had never been a judge or politician, brought a lawyerly, pragmatic perspective to the Court. He wrote some opinions in favor of civil liberties, occasionally blocked the Court's full embrace of laissez-faire economics, and became notorious as the justice whose vote in 1895 torpedoed the new federal income tax. This last decision, for which Shiras was incorrectly blamed, ultimately led to the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913.

Shiras was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on January 26, 1832, to a wealthy brewing family. He attended Yale Law School in 1853. Two years later he completed his training at a law office in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, before starting a legal practice with his brother. The practice specialized in representing the railroads and other big industries during the boom era of Pittsburgh. So successful was Shiras that, by the late 1880s, he was earning the then-phenomenal income of $75,000 annually. He developed no national reputation, steering clear of partisan politics even when the state legislature nominated him for a senate seat. Independent in nature, he sometimes represented interests opposed to his business clients.

In 1892 President Benjamin Harrison nominated Shiras to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the death of Justice Joseph P. Bradley. Like Bradley, Shiras was a Pennsylvania Republican, and convention dictated that Bradley's replacement be of similar political and geographic origin. Thus for political reasons Shiras was a good choice, even though he had no judicial or political experience. Strong opposition to the nomination came from the president's enemies. But support from powerful, private figures, including Andrew Carnegie, was ultimately persuasive.

When Shiras joined the Court, the chief issue of the day was regulation of business. The Court was conservative, believing in the hands-off policy of laissez-faire economics. Shiras usually joined his fellow justices in voting to restrict antitrust and labor legislation. But he occasionally stood apart, as in Brass v. North Dakota, 153 U.S. 391, 14 S. Ct. 857, 38 L. Ed. 757 (1894), where he upheld state power to regulate. Moreover, he was committed to civil liberties. In Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228, 16 S. Ct. 977, 41 L. Ed. 140 (1896), he wrote a landmark opinion extending basic rights to Chinese immigrants; it held that Congress had unconstitutionally allowed federal authorities to summarily sentence illegal Chinese aliens to twelve months of hard labor without indictment or a jury trial.

In his lifetime, Shiras became notorious for having cast the swing vote to kill the first peacetime federal income tax. The tax, passed in 1894, was a popular response to the growing disparity in income levels caused by industrial growth. The case was Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust, 158 U.S. 601, 15 S. Ct. 912, 39 L. Ed. 1108, decided in three parts in 1895. The final vote, on May 20, was 5-4 against. Critics vilified Shiras for apparently changing his mind from an earlier vote. For nearly three decades, his reputation suffered until, after his death, it was persuasively argued that another justice had provided the swing vote. Pollock led directly to the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, allowing Congress to levy a federal income tax.

Shiras stepped down from the Court in 1903 at age seventy. He died on August 2, 1924, in Pittsburgh.

George Shiras, Jr.
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
In office July 26, 1892 – February 23, 1903 (retired)
Nominated by	Benjamin Harrison
Preceded by	Joseph Philo Bradley
Succeeded by	William R. Day
Born	January 26, 1832(1832-01-26) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Died	August 2, 1924 (aged 92) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Spouse(s)	Lillie E. Kennedy
Religion	Presbyterian

George Shiras, Jr. (January 26, 1832 – August 2, 1924) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States who was nominated to the Court by Republican President Benjamin Harrison. At that time, he had 37 years of private legal practice, but had never judged a case. He remains the only Supreme Court Justice who had no prior judicial experience.^[1]

Shiras was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania January 26, 1832. He graduated from Yale College, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1853.^[2] He began law school at Yale, but left before earning a law degree^[1] He finished his training at a law office, then practiced law in Dubuque, Iowa from 1855 to 1858, and in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1858 to 1892.^[3]

Although Shiras sat on the Court for more than 10 years authoring 253 majority decisions and 14 dissents, he is noted for his votes on just two landmark cases, Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895), and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).^[1] He sided with the majority in the 5-4 decision in Pollock to strike down the Income Tax Act of 1894 as unconstitutional. Some historians believe Shiras was the pivotal Justice who switched his vote, while other historians suspect that it was either Justice Horace Gray or Justice David Brewer.^[1] Regardless, the ruling in Pollock led to the need for a constitutional amendment to impose a federal income tax, and in 1913, Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. Shiras also voted with the 7-1 majority Plessy, a case which upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the doctrine of separate but equal, and which was not overruled until 1954.

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c d} George Shiras, HistoryCentral.com, accessed Oct 10, 2009
2. ^ Supreme Court Justices Who Are Phi Beta Kappa Members, Phi Beta Kappa website, accessed Oct 4, 2009
3. ^ George Shiras, Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, accessed Oct 10 2009

References

• Friedman, Leon; Israel, Fred L. (1969). The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789–1969: Their Lives and Major Opinions. New York: Chelsea House. 
• George Shiras, Jr. at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.

External links

• George Shiras, Jr. at Find a Grave

Legal offices
Preceded by Joseph Philo Bradley	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States October 10, 1892 – February 23, 1903	Succeeded by William R. Day

Supreme Court of the United States

The Fuller Court Chief Justice: Melville Weston Fuller (1888–1910) 1892–1893: S.J. Field | J.M. Harlan | H. Gray | S. Blatchford | L.Q.C. Lamar II | D.J. Brewer | H.B. Brown | Geo. Shiras, Jr. 1893: S.J. Field | J.M. Harlan | H. Gray | S. Blatchford | D.J. Brewer | H.B. Brown | Geo. Shiras, Jr. | H.E. Jackson 1894–1895: S.J. Field | J.M. Harlan | H. Gray | D.J. Brewer | H.B. Brown | Geo. Shiras, Jr. | H.E. Jackson | E.D. White 1896–1897: S.J. Field | J.M. Harlan | H. Gray | D.J. Brewer | H.B. Brown | Geo. Shiras, Jr. | E.D. White | R.W. Peckham 1898–1902: J. M. Harlan | H. Gray | D.J. Brewer | H.B. Brown | Geo. Shiras, Jr. | E.D. White | R.W. Peckham | J. McKenna 1902–1903: J. M. Harlan | D.J. Brewer | H.B. Brown | Geo. Shiras, Jr. | E.D. White | R.W. Peckham | J. McKenna | O.W. Holmes

Persondata
NAME	Shiras, George Jr.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	United States federal judge
DATE OF BIRTH	January 26, 1832
PLACE OF BIRTH	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH	August 2, 1924
PLACE OF DEATH	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)