Blatchford, Samuel (1820–1893)

AuthorCharles W. Mccurdy
Pages198-199

Page 198

Samuel Blatchford had been a federal judge for fifteen years when CHESTER A. ARTHUR appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1882. Like Horace Gray, Arthur's other appointee, Blatchford had initially made his mark on the profession as a reporter. Beginning in 1852, he published a volume of admiralty cases decided in the Southern District of New York, a volume of CIVIL WAR prize cases from the same JURISDICTION, and twenty-four volumes of Second Circuit decisions. He continued to report Second Circuit opinions following his appointment as district judge (1867), circuit judge (1872), and circuit justice. Blatchford's expertise in admiralty, PATENT, and construction of the national banking acts made him the Supreme Court's workhorse; he wrote 435 majority opinions during his eleven-year tenure, almost twenty percent more than his proportional share.

Two personal characteristics shaped Blatchford's modest contributions to American constitutional development. He was singularly uninterested in questions of statecraft, political economy, and philosophy; he was so committed to a collective conception of the judicial function that he dissented less frequently then any Justice since the era of JOHN MARSHALL. These attitudes, coupled with Chief

Page 199

Justice MORRISON R. WAITE'S disinclination to assign him cases involving CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION, kept Blatchford out of the limelight during his first eight years on the Court. But his compromising tendency prompted MELVILLE W. FULLER, Waite's successor, to regard him as the logical spokesman for narrow, unstable majorities in two controversial FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT cases. Blatchford's lackluster performances in CHICAGO, MILWAUKEE AND ST. PAUL RAILWAY V. MINNESOTA (1890) and Budd v. New York (1892) underscored his stolid approach to constitutional law.

At issue in the Chicago, Milwaukee case was the validity of an 1887 Minnesota statute establishing a railroad commission authorized to set maximum rate schedules that would be "final and conclusive." Because this scheme left no role for courts in reviewing railroad rates, the briefs focused on two previous statements by Chief Justice Waite. In Munn v. Illinois (1877) Waite had explained that "the controlling fact" in rate controversies was "the power to regulate at all." And he had added that "for protection against abuses by legislatures the people must resort to the polls, not the courts." In the Railroad Commission...

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