Day, William R. (1849–1923)

• Author: Stanley I. Kutler
• Pages: 748-749

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William Rufus Day was named to the Supreme Court by THEODORE ROOSEVELT in 1903, after WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT

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had declined the nomination to remain at his post in the Philippines. Coincidentally, Day had replaced Taft on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1899 when President WILLIAM MCKINLEY dispatched Taft to the Pacific outpost.

Day's tenure spanned the Progressive era. He generally favored the movement's interventionist thrust, particularly state regulatory actions. Day's decisions relating to federal power, however, were more ambivalent, as reflected by his famous opinion in HAMMER V. DAGENHART (1918), which invalidated a congressional attempt to regulate child labor premised on the COMMERCE CLAUSE. Unlike many STATES ' RIGHTS advocates, he consistently supported state police regulations.

Justice Day faithfully followed the precedent of UNITED STATES V. E. C. KNIGHT COMPANY (1895), holding that Congress's INTERSTATE COMMERCE power did not extend to PRODUCTION. For example, in Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company v. Yurkonis (1915) he declined to extend coverage of the federal EMPLOYERS LIABILITY ACT to coal miners even though the coal they produced eventually was used in interstate commerce. Three years later, in the child labor case, Day elaborated his conception of FEDERALISM with an expansive discussion of the TENTH AMENDMENT and its limitations on national power. He found that a congressional law prohibiting the interstate transportation of goods made by child labor unconstitutionally regulated production.

Generally, however, Day supported federal regulation of business. In Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company v. Robinson (1914), he wrote an opinion sustaining amendments to the HEPBURN ACT that greatly expanded federal JURISDICTION in railroad regulation, and in Harriman v. Interstate Commerce Commission (1908) he vigorously dissented from an opinion by Justice OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES that weakened the commission's SUB-POENA powers. Day also consistently sided with the government in antitrust suits. Soon after his appointment, he provided the decisive vote for the government in NORTHERN SECURITIES COMPANY V. UNITED STATES (1904). Although he acquiesced in the Court's RULE OF REASON doctrine in STANDARD OIL COMPANY V. UNITED STATES and UNITED STATES V. AMERICAN TOBACCO COMPANY (1911), Day expressed reservations toward the doctrine in a number of opinions that strongly...