Sanford, Edward Terry

• Author: Jeffrey Lehman, Shirelle Phelps

Page 454

An important influence on the development of civil liberties, Edward Terry Sanford served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1923 to 1930. Sanford was a native of Tennessee with a cosmopolitan education, and before serving on the Court, he had a private law practice, served in the JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, and was a federal district judge in his home state for fourteen years. While on the Court, Sanford's views were largely moderate, and in his lifetime, he was overshadowed by his highly visible contemporaries. Nonetheless, Sanford's opinions on civil liberties helped advance the guarantees of the BILL OF RIGHTS: in two major opinions delivered in the 1920s, he

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laid the groundwork for modern Supreme Court decisions that restrict the power of states to limit FIRST AMENDMENT rights to FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

Sanford was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on July 23, 1865, the son of a lumber and construction millionaire. He earned four degrees from the University of Tennessee and Harvard, and studied languages in France and Germany. At Harvard Law School, he distinguished himself as the editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude. He began practicing law in Tennessee in the 1890s. He then lectured in law at the University of Tennessee from 1898 to 1906 before moving to Washington, D.C., for his first federal job.

Sanford's federal law career began in prosecution and rapidly took him to the federal bench. He joined the Justice Department in 1906 as a special assistant prosecutor, and a year later he was made an assistant attorney general. By 1908 Sanford returned to Tennessee as a federal district judge, a position he held until 1923. His specialties were BANKRUPTCY and EQUITY cases. On the bench he developed a reputation for open-mindedness, fairness, and leniency, at times reversing his own decisions. He was highly driven and nervously energetic, and would pace and chain-smoke in his chambers while considering his busy docket.

In 1923 Sanford's nomination to the Supreme Court came at the behest of his friends, Chief Justice WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT and Attorney General HARRY M. DAUGHERTY. The two men convinced President WARREN G. HARDING of Sanford's breadth of education and varied experience, which included service on the LEAGUE OF NATIONS. The nomination succeeded easily in the Senate, and Sanford sat on

Edward T. Sanford.

COLLECTION OF U.S. SUPREME COURT

the Court for seven years until his...