Supreme Court Building

President William Howard Taft’s Massive Impact On Supreme Court History!

President William Howard Taft, our 27th President, never gets a fair shake in history, due to the misfortune of being in office between two charismatic Presidents,Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and facing both in the Presidential Election of 1912, and ending up third, the only time a major party Presidential candidate ended up other than first or second in an election.

Taft may have had the worst re-election defeat in American history, winning only two states and 8 electoral votes in 1912, but despite that, Taft goes down in history as, in many ways, the most influential President on the matter of the Supreme Court, other than Franklin D. Roosevelt.

How is that, one might ask?

Well, Taft set a record of making the most appointments in one term ever in American history, as SIX vacancies opened up on the Court, including Chief Justice Edward Douglass White and Associate Justice Charles Evans Hughes having the most impact. Also, strong conservative Willis Van Devanter served 26 years on the Court, working against FDR’s New Deal in the 1930s.

Only George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt surpassed him in appointments, and Andrew Jackson matched him.

Since Taft served as Chief Justice by appointment of President Warren G. Harding after 1921 until 1930, he both picked his predecessor, and was followed as Chief Justice by Hughes, who was appointed by President Herbert Hoover as his replacement, with Hughes having resigned from the Court to run against Woodrow Wilson in 1916.

Additionally, Taft was the Chief Justice who did the lobbying that led to plans for a separate Supreme Court Building, although he died in 1930, never seeing the Court building completed and opened in 1935.

So William Howard Taft had a vast impact on the history of the Supreme Court!

13 Former Presidents And Public Service After The Presidency

With Presidents Day upon us, another interesting point of investigation about the American Presidency is the extent of public service of former Presidents.

The Presidents who remained active public figures after their Presidency, chronologically, were:

President John Quincy Adams (1825-1829), who served as a Congressman from Boston from 1830-1848, dying on the House floor during a debate over expansion of slavery into the territories gained from the Mexican War.

President Martin Van Buren (1837-1841), who after his difficult term in office due to the Panic of 1837, attempted to come back to the Presidency in 1844, failing at that venture, but running as the Presidential candidate of the Free Soil Party in 1848, the forerunner of the Republican Party.

President John Tyler (1841-1845), who renounced his American citizenship, and served for one year in the Confederate Congress before his death in 1862, which was not officially acknowledged by the United States government, due to his treason, as Americans saw it.

President Millard Fillmore (1850-1853), who after completing Zachary Taylor’s unfinished term without much distinction, came back and ran as the Presidential candidate of the American (Know Nothings) Party, an anti immigrant party, in the 1856 Presidential election, winning only Maryland in the Electoral College, and then went back into obscurity.

President Andrew Johnson (1865-1869), who served a few months as US Senator from Tennessee in 1875, serving alongside many of that body who had voted to remove him from office in the Impeachment trial of 1868, but died after those few months in the upper chamber.

President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), who remained active, and ran for President on the third party Progressive Party line in 1912 against his own successor, William Howard Taft, and by running, helped to elect Woodrow Wilson as the next President. He also wrote and made speeches incessantly on every public topic imaginable!

President William Howard Taft (1909-1913), who was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by President Warren G. Harding in 1921, served nine years, and helped to plan the construction of the Supreme Court Building, which opened five years after he left the Court.

President Herbert Hoover (1929-1933), who served on the Hoover Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of Government under appointment by President Harry Truman after World War II. Hoover also kept active in writing, and speaking up about public affairs.

President Richard Nixon (1969-1974), stayed active, writing about ten books and doing a lot of traveling around the world, and was an informal adviser to every President after him, including Bill Clinton in whose first term he passed away.

President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) remained extremely active in his post Presidential years, writing over 20 books, forming the Carter Center to promote peace and diplomacy, and the fight against many diseases, and working for Habitat for Humanity in the construction of housing for the poor. He also had innumerable interviews and constantly spoke his mind on all kinds of domestic and foreign policy issues, and that continues today.

President Bill Clinton (1993-2001) followed in the steps of Jimmy Carter, promoting regular activity through his Clinton Global Initiative, and also promoting earthquake relief in Haiti in 2010 in tandem with President George W. Bush (2001-2009). Also, Clinton was involved in promotion of relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 with former President George H. W. Bush (1989-1993). He also has been interviewed regularly and published many books and articles.

So these are the contributions, after being President, of 13 Presidents, and it is highly likely that President Barack Obama will continue that tradition, leaving office, whether in 2013 or 2017, as one of the youngest retired Presidents in our history as a nation!