Strong, William (1808–1895)

AuthorStanley I. Kutler
Pages2563-2564

Page 2563

Strong was a learned, able, hard-working Supreme Court Justice who competently handled the tedious routine of COMMON LAW, admiralty, PATENT, and revenue law cases. Except for sustaining legal tenders and invalidating state-authorized exclusion of blacks from jury service, he rarely spoke for the Court in constitutional matters during his ten-year career. Strong's appointment in 1870 was viewed as part of an alleged court-packing scheme to reverse a recent decision invalidating legal tender legislation. But President ULYSSES S. GRANT had decided to nominate Strong and JOSEPH P. BRADLEY in January 1870, a month before an eight-man court, including a Justice who already had resigned, narrowly decided Hepburn v. Griswold. Grant, meanwhile, was well aware that Strong had written an opinion for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court sustaining the laws.

Strong did not disappoint Grant. In May 1871, he wrote the majority opinion in Knox v. Lee and Parker v. Davis, reversing Hepburn. He largely based his argument on the NECESSARY AND PROPER clause, finding the legal tender legislation a necessary concomitant to the WAR POWER. He also refuted the Hepburn argument that the laws violated the "spirit of the Constitution" because they impaired the OBLIGATION OF CONTRACTS. All contracts, Strong contended, had to anticipate the rightful exercise of congressional power.

Strong generally defended vested contractual and property rights, the LEGAL TENDER CASES notwithstanding. He joined Justice STEPHEN J. FIELD'S dissent in Munn v. Illinois (1877). In his own dissent in the SINKING FUND CASES (1879), he maintained that the government could not require railroads to divert part of their earnings into a special fund for payment of their federal debts. The original railroad grant contained no such provision, but Congress had reserved the right to alter, amend, or repeal the act. Strong nevertheless insisted that the new requirement was "plainly transgressive of legislative power" for it violated an implied contractual promise not to call for debt payment before 1897. Strong's dissent, along with those by JOSEPH BRADLEY and Field, heralded the procorporation, antistatist tendencies that dominated the Court for several decades.

The Court's concern with state economic regulation inevitably provoked operations of national authority. In the State Freight Tax Case (1873) (see PHILADELPHIA AND READING R. R. CO. V. PENNSYLVANIA) Strong offered a...

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