Wayne, James M. (1790?-1867)

AuthorWilliam M. Wiecek
Pages2867-2868

Page 2867

After service as an elected official and judge in Georgia and as a Jacksonian Democrat in Congress, James Moore Wayne served thirty-two years as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Despite this lengthy tenure he produced no significant opinions, though he consistently strove to protect national authority, CORPORATIONS, and SLAVERY. During the CIVIL WAR, his nationalist outlook induced him to remain on the Court as a Unionist.

Wayne, son of a well-to-do Savannah factor and rice planter, was educated at the College of New Jersey (Princeton), read law in New Haven and in his native Savannah, and was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1811. He was a member of the Georgia House of Representatives from 1815 to 1817, mayor of Savannah from 1817 to 1819, and successively judge of a court of common pleas and of the Superior Court. He later served in two state CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTIONS, the second time as president. In 1829, Wayne was elected to the United States House of Representatives, where he prominently supported ANDREW JACKSON. He promoted Indian removal from his native state, backed Jackson's Bank policies, and stood by the President during the Nullification Crisis in South Carolina. He was the only member of the Georgia delegation to support the FORCE BILL. In his last term, he became chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Jackson nominated Wayne to take the seat of Justice WILLIAM JOHNSON of South Carolina, and he was confirmed in 1835. Justice BENJAMIN R. CURTIS later called Wayne one of the "most high-toned Federalists on the bench," referring to Wayne's tenacious nationalism. This outlook was most apparent in COMMERCE CLAUSE cases. In the PASSENGER CASES (1849), Wayne was one of a majority that held unconstitutional state statutes regulating the ingress of ship passengers on the ground that insofar as such laws "practically operated as regulations of commerce, or as restraints upon navigation," they were unconstitutional. The power to regulate foreign and INTERSTATE COMMERCE was "exclusively vested in congress." Unlike his fellow Southerner, Chief Justice ROGER B. TANEY, he was not troubled by the implications of this position for the states' control of slavery. Wayne joined in Justice JOHN MCLEAN'S nationalist dissent in COOLEY V. BOARD OF WARDENS (1851), arguing that Congress's control of interstate and FOREIGN COMMERCE was exclusive of state power.

The same nationalist spirit...

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