Morrison R. Waite Court (1873-1888)
Morrison R. Waite was the 7th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, succeeding Salmon Portland Chase. He was nominated on January 19, 1874 by President Ulysses S. Grant. Waite was the third nominee for the seat, following two nominees whom Grant had withdrawn when the Senate signaled its opposition. The Senate confirmed Waite on January 19, 1874, and he was sworn into office on March 4, 1874. Waite served as Chief Justice until he died on March 23, 1888 and was succeeded by Melville Weston Fuller.
The membership of the Court was largely steady during the first several years of Waite’s tenure. During this period, the only change came when Justice David Davis resigned in 1877 and was replaced by Justice John Marshall Harlan. Then, four Justices left the Court in a 14-month period between December 1880 and January 1882. Justices William Strong and Noah Haynes Swayne retired in the winter of 1880-1881 and were replaced by Justices William Burnham Woods and Stanley Matthews, respectively. Justice Nathan Clifford died in July 1881 and was replaced by Justice Horace Gray. Justice Ward Hunt retired in January 1882 and was replaced by Justice Samuel Blatchford.
After this flurry of changes, the Waite Court returned to stability. The last change to its membership came shortly before Waite died. Justice Woods died in 1887 and was replaced in 1888 by the pompously named Justice Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar.
The Waite Court helped resolve the 1876 presidential election. The key to victory consisted of 20 disputed electoral votes. To review these votes, Congress formed a 15-member Electoral Commission: five members of the House of Representatives, five Senators, and five Supreme Court Justices (Clifford, Miller, Field, Strong, and Bradley). Composed of eight Republicans and seven Democrats, the Commission voted along party lines. It awarded all 20 votes to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. Democrat Samuel J. Tilden thus fell one electoral vote short of the Presidency, despite winning the popular vote.
The 1876 election marked the twilight of Reconstruction and the dawn of the Gilded Age, a period defined by economic growth and technological innovation. The Waite Court addressed issues central to both eras, ranging from civil liberties to intellectual property. For example, a year after taking his seat, Waite ruled that women had no constitutional right to vote. A few days before he died, he upheld the patents of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone.
Associate Justices on the Waite Court:
- Nathan Clifford (1858-1881)
- Samuel Freeman Miller (1862-1890)
- David Davis (1862-1877)
- Noah Haynes Swayne (1862-1881)
- Stephen Johnson Field (1863-1897)
- William Strong (1870-1880)
- Joseph Bradley (1870-1892)
- Ward Hunt (1873-1882)
- John Marshall Harlan (1877-1911)
- William Burnham Woods (1881-1887)
- Stanley Matthews (1881-1889)
- Samuel Blatchford (1882-1893)
- Horace Gray (1882-1902)
- Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar (1888-1893)
Selected Landmark Cases of the Waite Court:
Author: Morrison R. Waite
Topic: Patents
To procure a patent for a process, the inventor must describe their invention with sufficient clearness and precision to enable those skilled in the matter to understand what their process is, and they must point out some practicable way of putting it into operation, but they are not required to bring the art to the highest degree of perfection.
Presser v. Illinois (1886)
Author: William Burnham Woods
Topic: Gun Rights
In view of the fact that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force of the national government, as well as in view of its general powers, the states cannot prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security. However, unless restrained by their own constitutions, state legislatures may enact statutes to control and regulate all organizations, drilling, and parading of military bodies and associations, except those that are authorized by the militia laws of the United States.
Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886)
Author: Stanley Matthews
Topic: Immigration & National Security
The Fourteenth Amendment extends to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S. Thus, foreign nationals who have the right to temporarily or permanently reside in the U.S. are entitled to equal protection.
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. (1886)
Author: John Marshall Harlan
Topic: Taxes
An assessment of a tax is invalid and will not support an action for the recovery of the tax if it is laid on different kinds of property as a unit and includes property not legally assessable, and if the part of the tax assessed on the latter property cannot be separated from the other part of it.
Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony (1884)
Author: Samuel Freeman Miller
Topic: Copyrights
Congress can confer copyright protection for photographs that are representations of original intellectual conceptions.
Elk v. Wilkins (1884)
Author: Horace Gray
Topic: Immigration & National Security
There are only two sources of citizenship: birth and naturalization. People not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. at the time of birth cannot become so afterwards except by being naturalized.
U.S. v. Harris (1883)
Author: William Burnham Woods
Topic: Equal Protection
When the laws of a state, as enacted by its legislative and construed by its judicial and administered by its executive departments, recognize and protect the rights of all persons, the Fourteenth Amendment imposes no duty and confers no power on Congress.
Pace v. Alabama (1883)
Author: Stephen Johnson Field
Topic: Equal Protection
A state law prohibiting a white person and an African-American person from living with each other “in adultery or fornication” did not violate the Constitution even though it prescribed penalties more severe than those to which the parties would be subject, were they of the same race and color.
Civil Rights Cases (1883)
Author: Joseph Bradley
Topic: Due Process; Equal Protection
It is state action of a particular character that is prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment. Individual invasion of individual rights is not the subject matter of the amendment.
Egbert v. Lippmann (1881)
Author: William Burnham Woods
Topic: Patents
To constitute the public use of an invention, it is not necessary that more than one of the patented articles should be publicly used. Also, whether the use is public or private does not necessarily depend on the number of persons to whom its use is known. Finally, if an inventor sells a machine of which their invention forms a part, and they allow it to be used without restriction of any kind, the use is public.
Strauder v. West Virginia (1880)
Author: William Strong
Topic: Criminal Trials & Prosecutions; Equal Protection
When a state law secures to every white man the right of trial by a jury selected from and without discrimination against his race, and at the same time permits or requires such discrimination against the colored man because of his race, the latter is not equally protected by law with the former.
Baker v. Selden (1879)
Author: Joseph Bradley
Topic: Copyrights
A claim to the exclusive property in a peculiar system of bookkeeping cannot be maintained by the author of a treatise in which that system is exhibited and explained.
Pennoyer v. Neff (1878)
Author: Stephen Johnson Field
Topic: Lawsuits & Legal Procedures
Proceedings to determine the personal rights and obligations of parties over whom the court has no jurisdiction do not constitute due process.
City of Elizabeth v. American Nicholson Pavement Co. (1878)
Author: Joseph Bradley
Topic: Patents
The use of an invention by the inventor or people under their direction, if made in good faith solely to test its qualities, remedy its defects, and bring it to perfection, is not a public use that precludes a patent even if others thereby derive a knowledge of it.
Reynolds v. U.S. (1878)
Author: Morrison R. Waite
Topic: Religion
A party's religious belief cannot be accepted as a justification for committing an overt act made criminal by the law of the land.
U.S. v. Reese (1876)
Author: Morrison R. Waite
Topic: Voting & Elections
The power of Congress to legislate on the subject of voting at state elections rests on the Fifteenth Amendment, and it can be exercised by providing a punishment only when the wrongful refusal to receive the vote of a qualified elector at such elections is because of their race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876)
Author: Morrison R. Waite
Topic: Gun Rights
The Second Amendment declares that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed, but this means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government.
Minor v. Happersett (1875)
Author: Morrison R. Waite
Topic: Voting & Elections
A provision in a state constitution that confines the right of voting to male citizens of the United States is not a violation of the federal Constitution. In such a state, women have no right to vote.
Kohl v. U.S. (1875)
Author: William Strong
Topic: Property Rights & Land Use
The right of eminent domain exists in the federal government and may be exercised by it within the states to the extent that it is necessary to the enjoyment of the powers conferred on the federal government by the Constitution.
