Wiley Blount Rutledge

(b. Cloverport, Ky., 20 July 1894; d. York, Maine, 10 Sep. 1949; interred Green Mountain Cemetery, Boulder, Colo.), associate justice, 1943–1949. Wiley Rutledge, the last of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Court appointments, received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in 1914 and spent his early years as a high school teacher in Indiana, New Mexico, and Colorado. A law degree from the University of Colorado in 1922 was followed by two years of private practice. For the next fifteen years, he taught law as an associate professor at the University of Colorado and as professor and dean first at Washington University in St. Louis and then at the State University of Iowa.

Rutledge's vocal criticism of anti‐New Deal Supreme Court decisions and his support for FDR's court‐packing plan brought him national attention. In 1939, he was suggested for two Supreme Court vacancies, but the president chose William O. Douglas and Felix Frankfurter and then appointed Rutledge to the prestigious District of Columbia circuit. As an appellate court judge, his opinions consistently reflected New Deal constitutional legal perspectives. When James F. Byrnes retired from the Court in 1942, FDR, in spite of Frankfurter's energetic support of Learned Hand, chose Rutledge.

During his six‐year tenure, Rutledge wrote significant opinions in the areas of administrative law, National Labor Relations Board v. Hearst Publications (1944); civil procedure, Guaranty Trust v. York (1945); labor law, Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway v. Burley (1946) and United States v. United Mine Workers (1947); and tax law, United States v. Massachusetts (1948). Yet his most enduring contribution was his participation in the development of constitutional doctrine in the areas of freedom of speech and religion.

When Rutledge joined the court, it had begun to recognize a constitutional double standard. In United States v. Carolene Products (1938), Justice Stone had suggested that restrictions on First Amendment freedoms would be subject to more exacting judicial scrutiny than government economic regulation (see Footnote Four). Then in his Jones v. Opelika (1942) dissent, joined by Justices black, Douglas, and Frank Murphy, Stone, by then chief justice, explicitly embraced this position. When Rutledge joined the court, he provided the fifth vote for Douglas's opinion in Murdock v. Pennsylvania (1943), which overruled Opelika and struck down on preferred freedom grounds a license fee imposed on the peddlers of religious materials.

Rutledge's contribution to fundamental rights analysis came in Thomas v. Collins (1945). His opinion for the Court provided the clearest exposition of the preferred position doctrine in condemning a state license requirement as a violation of labor organizers' First Amendment rights. In Kovacs v. Cooper (1949), he defended the doctrine against Frankfurter's claim that it was an exercise in mechanical jurisprudence that automatically condemned government regulation. Rutledge knew otherwise. When he joined Black's opinion in Korematsu v. United States (1944) and authored the court's opinion in Prince v. Massachusetts (1944), he had acknowledged that preferred freedoms were not beyond the reach of government when its interests in national security and the general welfare were compelling.

Bibliography

• Mr. Justice Rutledge, symposium in Iowa Law Review 35 (Summer 1950): 541–699

— William Crawford Green

• Born: July 20, 1894, Cloverport, Ky.
• Education: University of Wisconsin, B.A., 1914; University of Colorado, LL.B., 1922
• Previous government service: judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, 1939–43
• Appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt Jan. 11, 1943; replaced James F. Byrnes, who resigned
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Feb. 8, 1943, by a voice vote; served until Sept. 10, 1949
• Died: Sept. 10, 1949, York, Maine

Wiley B. Rutledge was a strong supporter of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. As dean of the University of Iowa Law School, Rutledge spoke against the Supreme Court majority that opposed President Roosevelt's policies in key Court cases. The President rewarded Rutledge with an appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. As an appellate court judge, Rutledge consistently supported the President's New Deal. When James F. Byrnes retired from the Court in 1942, President Roosevelt picked Rutledge to replace him.

During his six years on the Court, Justice Rutledge was a strong defender of 1st Amendment freedoms. His only lapses from this position were his votes with the majority in the Japanese-American internment cases of World War II (e.g., Kore-matsu v. United States and Hirabayashi v. United States), in which he supported the government's right to detain Japanese Americans on the basis that they might be a threat to national security.

Sources

• Fowler Harper, Justice Rutledge and the Bright Constellation (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965)

A stalwart defender of civil liberties, Associate Justice Wiley B. Rutledge, Jr., sat on the U.S. Supreme Court for six years during the transitional New Deal era. Rutledge was a distinguished law professor and dean who became a judge through his support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1939 Roosevelt named him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and four years later to the Supreme Court. From 1943 until his death in 1949, Rutledge championed the rights of minorities and unpopular groups.

Born in Cloverport, Kentucky, on July 20, 1894, Rutledge was the son of a fundamentalist Baptist minister. His father, Wiley, Sr., rode the backwaters of Kentucky preaching hellfire and brimstone, often with his son in tow. By his teens, however, Rutledge had left for the University of Wisconsin where he immersed himself in debate, classical literature, and ancient languages, earning a B.A. in 1914.

In his twenties, tuberculosis and financial trouble forced Rutledge to postpone the legal education he desired. Between 1915 and 1920, he supported himself and his wife, Annabel Person, by teaching high school in Indiana, New Mexico, and finally in Colorado, where he enrolled in a full-time law program at the state university. By 1922 he had earned his law degree, and immediately accepted a job with a Boulder firm. But he left practice two years later in order to embark on a fifteen-year long career as a law professor. He taught at three universities, promoted modern teaching methods, and ultimately served as dean at Washington University (1930-1935) and the Iowa College of Law (1935-1939). It was during these later years, while engaging in debate over local and national issues, that he developed a reputation as a champion of the underdog.

Rutledge was an ardent supporter of President Roosevelt's New Deal, a series of legislative reforms designed to pull the nation out of economic depression. Yet the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one after another of the president's programs. Roosevelt then announced his controversial plan to reorganize the federal judicial system—the so-called court-packing plan that would have filled even the Supreme Court with pro-Roosevelt justices. Rutledge backed it. In 1939 the president appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and in 1943 he appointed Rutledge to the Supreme Court.

Rutledge consistently upheld the rights of the individual, including the rights to a jury trial, to practice religion freely, to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and not to suffer cruel and unusual punishment. In his concurring opinion in Schneiderman v. United States, 320 U.S. 118, 63 S. Ct. 1333, 87 L. Ed. 1796 (1943), he voted to restore citizenship to an immigrant who, twelve years after his naturalization, had been targeted for deportation by the Justice Department because of membership in the Communist Party. In Yamashita v. Styer, 327 U.S. 1, 66 S. Ct. 340, 90 L. Ed. 499 (1946), Rutledge dissented from the denial of habeas corpus relief to Japanese general Yamashita Tomoyuki, who had been sentenced to death for war crimes on the basis of hearsay evidence.

Rutledge regularly joined the opinions of Justices Hugo L. Black, Frank Murphy, and William O. Douglas. He worked exhaustively, and, in the opinion of some of his brethren on the Court, too much. He died on September 10, 1949, in York, Maine, at the age of 54.

Wiley Blount Rutledge
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
In office February 15, 1943 – September 10, 1949
Nominated by	Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Preceded by	James F. Byrnes
Succeeded by	Sherman Minton
Born	July 20, 1894(1894-07-20) Cloverport, Kentucky
Died	September 10, 1949 (aged 55) York, Maine
Spouse(s)	Annabel Person

Wiley Blount Rutledge, Jr. (July 20, 1894 - September 10, 1949) was a U.S. educator and jurist.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Legal career 3 See also 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links

Early life

Rutledge was born in Cloverport, Kentucky (more specifically, at nearby Tar Springs) to Wiley Blount Rutledge, Sr., a Southern Baptist minister, and Mary Lou Wigginton Rutledge (d. 1903). Another son died in infancy, and then his sister Margaret was born in 1897. His family moved about while he was young, but he attended college at Maryville College and then the University of Wisconsin–Madison, graduating from there in 1914. Rutledge taught high school in Indiana while attending the Indiana University law school part-time. He later moved to Colorado, and received a degree from the University of Colorado School of Law in Boulder. While matriculating at Colorado, Rutledge joined the Pi Chapter of Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity.

On August 28, 1917, Rutledge married Annabel Person. The couple had three children: Mary Lou (1922), Jean Ann (1925), and Neal (1927).

Rutledge worked in private practice in Boulder for a few years before deciding to instead pursue an academic career. He taught at a number of law schools before being named Dean of the University of Iowa College of Law in 1935. From this position, Rutledge was a vocal supporter of Franklin Roosevelt's plan to pack the Supreme Court. Rutledge also served as Dean of Washington University School of Law from 1930-1935, where the Wiley Rutledge Moot Court competition is named in his honor.^[1]

Legal career

Roosevelt appointed Rutledge to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1939, and Rutledge quickly demonstrated strong liberal tendencies, particularly in his interpretation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Roosevelt nominated Rutledge to the United States Supreme Court in 1943, where Rutledge continued his liberal leanings. Among other things, he wrote for the court "[O]ur Government is not one of mere convenience or efficiency. It too has a stake, with every citizen, in his being afforded our historic individual protections, including those surrounding criminal trials. About them we dare not become careless or complacent when that fashion has become rampant over the earth." Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750 (1946).

According to Justice Frankfurter, Rutledge was part of the more liberal "Axis" of justices on the Court, along with Justices Murphy, Douglas, and Black; the group would for years oppose Frankfurter's judicially-restrained ideology.^[2] Douglas, Murphy, and then Rutledge were the first justices to agree with Black's notion that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Bill of Rights protection into it; this view would later become law.^[3]

Rutledge served on the court until his death. On August 27, 1949, Rutledge was vacationing in Maine. He had a stroke while driving his car and died two weeks later, aged fifty-five. His remains are interred at Green Mountain Cemetery, Boulder, Boulder County, Colorado, USA.

One of Rutledge's law clerks, John Paul Stevens, would himself become a Supreme Court justice, in 1975.

See also

Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States by court composition List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States by education List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the U.S. by time in office

List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States List of United States Chief Justices by time in office United States Supreme Court cases during the Stone Court United States Supreme Court cases during the Vinson Court

References

• Data drawn in part from the Supreme Court Historical Society and Oyez.
• Justice Rutledge's papers are archived at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress and available to researchers.

1. ^ "WULS: Trial and Advocacy Program; Moot Court Competitions; Wiley Rutledge Moot Court". Law.wustl.edu. http://law.wustl.edu/TAP/index.asp?id=902. Retrieved 2008-10-17. 
2. ^ Ball, Howard. Hugo L. Black: Cold Steel Warrior. Oxford University Press. 2006. ISBN 0-19-507814-4. Page 14.
3. ^ Ball, Howard. Hugo L. Black: Cold Steel Warrior. Oxford University Press. 2006. ISBN 0-19-507814-4. Pages 212-213.

Further reading

• Abraham, Henry J. (1992). Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506557-3. 
• Cushman, Clare (2001). The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789–1995 (2nd ed.). (Supreme Court Historical Society, Congressional Quarterly Books). ISBN 1568021267. 
• Ferren, John M. (2004). Salt of the Earth, Conscience of the Court: The Story of Justice Wiley Rutledge. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807828661.  → an acclaimed full-length biography of Justice Rutledge by an author who is himself a senior federal judge.
• Frank, John P. (1995). Friedman, Leon; Israel, Fred L.. eds. The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions. Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 0791013774. 
• Hall, Kermit L., ed (1992). The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195058356. 
• Martin, Fenton S.; Goehlert, Robert U. (1990). The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Books. ISBN 0871875543. 
• Urofsky, Melvin I. (1994). The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland Publishing. pp. 590. ISBN 0815311761. 

External links

• Wiley B. Rutledge at Supreme Court Historical Society.
• Oyez, U.S. Supreme Court media, Wiley Blount Rutledge.

Legal offices
Preceded by New seat	Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit 1939-1943	Succeeded by Bennett Champ Clark
Preceded by James F. Byrnes	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States February 15, 1943 – September 10, 1949	Succeeded by Sherman Minton

Supreme Court of the United States

The Stone Court Chief Justice: Harlan Fiske Stone (1941–1946) 1943–1945: O.J. Roberts | H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | F. Murphy | R.H. Jackson | W.B. Rutledge 1945–1946: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | F. Murphy | R.H. Jackson | W.B. Rutledge | H.H. Burton The Vinson Court Chief Justice: Frederick Moore Vinson (1946–1953) 1946–1949: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | F. Murphy | R.H. Jackson | W.B. Rutledge | H.H. Burton

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