Waite, Morrison R. (1816–1888)

• Author: Herman Belz
• Pages: 2821-2824

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Morrison Remick Waite, sixth CHIEF JUSTICE of the United States, successfully led the Supreme Court in dealing with major constitutional problems concerning RECONSTRUCTION and business-government relations between 1874 and 1888.

Son of Henry Matson Waite, Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors, Morrison Waite read law after graduating from Yale College in 1837. In 1838 he removed to Ohio, where he built a flourishing legal practice specializing in commercial law, acquired substantial property interests, and joined the Whig party. Although prominent in the legal profession, Waite was virtually unknown in national affairs prior to his appointment as Chief Justice. He served one term in the Ohio legislature and a term on the Toledo city council, was appointed counsel to the Geneva Tribunal to negotiate the Alabama claims in 1872, and was elected president of the Ohio CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION of 1873.

The circumstances of Waite's appointment to the Court were remarkable, not so much because he lacked national political recognition as because he was the fifth person whom President ULYSSES S. GRANT nominated or asked to serve as Chief Justice. Yet Waite had early been touted for

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the position by leading Ohio politicians, and Grant had considered him a possibility from the beginning. His effective service at the Geneva Arbitration, professional reputation, and unwavering Republican party loyalty recommended him, and in January 1874 the Senate confirmed him by a 63?0 vote.

Waite's significance in American constitutional history is threefold. He wrote the first Supreme Court opinions interpreting the FOURTEENTH and FIFTEENTH AMENDMENTS in cases involving Negroes' CIVIL RIGHTS. Second, his 1877 opinions in Munn v. Illinois and the other GRANGER CASES established the basic principles of constitutional law governing state governments as they attempted to deal with economic changes caused by the industrial revolution. Third, Waite expressed a conception of JUDICIAL REVIEW that summarized dominant nineteenth-century ideas about constitutional adjudication and provided a model for twentieth-century theorists of judicial restraint.

The northern retreat from RECONSTRUCTION was well underway when Waite became Chief Justice, and the WAITE COURT did not attempt to reverse this political development. Under the circumstances, and given the circumscribed role of the judiciary in nineteenth-century constitutional politics, it had little choice but to acquiesce. In determining the meaning of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and in applying federal civil rights laws, however, the Court could choose among several possible conceptions of national legislative power and federal-state relations. Waite guided the Court toward a moderate position of STATES ' RIGHTS nationalism which upheld national power to protect civil rights within the framework of traditional FEDERALISM.

To understand this development it is necessary to advert to the SLAUGHTERHOUSE CASES (1873) and to Justice JOSEPH P. BRADLEY'S circuit court opinion in UNITED STATES V. CRUIKSHANK (1874). In the former, the Supreme Court confirmed the theory of dual American CITIZENSHIP, stated that the Fourteenth Amendment did not add to the rights of national citizenship, and concluded that ordinary civil rights were attributes of state citizenship, regulation of which was beyond the authority of the United States. In the Cruikshank case, involving prosecution of whites in Colfax, Louisiana, for violating the civil rights of Negro citizens, Justice Bradley held that although the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited state rather than private denial of civil rights, under certain conditions the federal government was authorized to guarantee civil rights against interference by private individuals. The relevant circumstance, according to Bradley, was state failure to fulfill its affirmative duty to protect citizens' rights.

Chief Justice Waite wrote the majority opinion when United States v. Cruikshank (1876) was decided in the Supreme Court. Defendants were indicted under a section of the Force...