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The Politics of Appointment and the Federal Courts' Role in Regulating America: U.S. Courts of Appeals Judgeships from T.R. to F.D.R.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Abstract
Historians and political scientists have noted that appointments of judges to the U.S. Courts of Appeals are not determined by senatorial courtesy alone. What has not been adequately explained is why and when a president defers to a senator's choice rather than seek to control the selection. This article attempts to understand the politics of federal appellate court appointments. The author first identifies a major change in the work of the courts of appeals during the years 1900-1945—the growth in review of the actions of newly created federal regulatory agencies. Then, by examining Justice Department files and presidential correspondence, he discoveres three patterns of appointment emerging in the same period. The patterns vary with presidential perceptions of the role of the federal government and of the courts of appeals' ability to affect accomplishment of administration goals. Appointments during the first years of the presidencies of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and during the Harding and Coolidge administrations were dominated by patronage concerns. Those administrations yielded to the recommendations of senators and demonstrated no interest in the policy-making potential of these courts. In the two other patterns the White House played a more active role, with senators more often deferring to the president's selection. Concerns about professionalism dominated selections in Taft's and Hoover's administrations: because they recognized the policy importance of those judgeships but saw the role of government as limited, they sought judicial craftsmen who would make policy only incrementally. Policy concerns dominated selections during Wilson's administration and the latter years of both the Roosevelts' administrations: Justice Department officials screened nominees to determine their policy orientation, because federal appellate court judgeships were perceived as crucial policy positions that could affect the president's ability to implement his reform programs.
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- Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1984
References
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134 Wilson to James McReynolds, Mar. 13, 1913, Wilson Papers, supra note 105. Note that in rewarding a friend the president justifies the selection on the candidate's policy positions. Compare this with Harding and Coolidge, text accompanying notes 194 and 202 infra.Google Scholar
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137 Chase, supra note 6, at 12 (quoting Dean Acheson, Morning and Noon 212 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1%5)). Acheson did refuse the appointment.Google Scholar
138 Burke, supra note 40, at 225. Burke states further on: “A number of Roosevelt's nominees were accepted by the senators without enthusiasm and only after political pressure had been applied.” Id. at 238. Burke dates the period of the importance of ideology in courts of appeals appointments as 1935–40. Id. at 245–46. However, in 1935–36 F.D.R. made six appointments to the appeals courts. With insufficient information on one of the six, Burke's account of the others attributes three to senatorial politics, says one enjoyed the support of both his senator and F.D.R.'s patronage chief, Jim Farley, and characterizes only Clifton Mathews, U.S. attorney in Arizona, as an ideological choice.Google Scholar
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140 The ten were identified from the information in Senate Committee on the Judiciary, supra note 40.Google Scholar
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151 Burke, supra note 40, at 263.Google Scholar
152 Kenneth McKeller to F. Roosevelt, Oct. 17, 1938, FDR Papers, supra note 141 (emphasis in original).Google Scholar
153 Id. Martin had written the trial court opinion in Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U.S. 288 (1936).Google Scholar
154 Burke, supra note 40, at 263.Google Scholar
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157 Id. at 168. But note another writer's comment: Yet Taft did not fully accept the judicial myth which permeated so much contemporary conservative political thought. Although he was perfectly able to accept and even expound the priestly role of the judge as a dispenser of sacred doctrine, he was not able to endorse the view that it was the Constitution, not the judge, which spoke through judicial decisions. In 1913 Taft had argued that judges had to adapt law to meet new conditions. “Indeed,” he stated. “it is one of the highest and most useful functions that courts have to perform in making a government of law practical and uniformly just.” The next year he was even more explicit: “Judges are men. Courts are composed of judges and one would be foolish who would deny that courts and judges are affected by the times in which they live.”Google Scholar
Walter F. Murphy, In His Own Image: Mr. Chief Justice Taft and Supreme Court Appointments, 1961 Sup. Ct. Rev. 159, 161 (footnotes omitted).Google Scholar
158 Alpheus Thomas Mason, William Howard Taft: Chief Justice 178 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965).Google Scholar
159 D. Anderson, supra note 155, at 168. Taft wrote, “I'll be damned if I put any man on this bench of whose character and ability there is the least doubt.” Id.Google Scholar
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170 George Wickersham to Franklin MacVeagh, Sec'y of the Treasury, Mar. 30, 191I, Dept. Just. Files, supra note 69. On Lodge's position in the 1912 election see Garraty, supra note 67, at 292–93.Google Scholar
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172 Wickersham to Samuel Powers, May 25, 1911; Powers to Wickersham, May 23, 1911. Asa French, U.S. attorney in Boston, stated that “Dodge is unquestionably the stronger man of the two.” French to Wickersham, May 21, 1911. The “blue slips” recommending Schofield are in the files. All items are in Dept. Just. Files, supra note 69.Google Scholar
173 Sen. W. M. Crane to Taft, July 3, 1912 (sending letter from him and Lodge requesting Dodge's appointment); Charles Hilles to Wickersham, July 10, 1912 (forwarding letter from senators to Taft and conveying Taft's desire to send Dodge's name to Senate as soon as possible)–-all in Dept. Just. Files, supra note 69.Google Scholar
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