Page:History of the Supreme court of the United States (IA historyofsupreme00myeriala).pdf/699



For the first time in the annals of the Supreme Court of the United States, the choice of a Chief Justice, was not made from the ranks of lawyers but the selection was determined of an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court itself: The member thus chosen by President Taft to succeed Fuller was Associate Justice Edward D. White. President Taft, succeeding Roosevelt in 1909, had himself been a judge on the bench of the United States Circuit Court. Indeed, it was authoritatively said that Taft's highest ambition was to go on the Supreme Court Bench, but his election as President interfered with his desire. After Fuller's death Taft had filled vacancies on the Supreme Court by appointing Horace H. Lurton and Charles E, Hughes as Associate Justices to succeed Peckham and Brewer. Although these two appointments were made during the incumbency of Fuller, yet they came late in that period, and we have accordingly reserved description for this chapter.

Of all the successive Chief Executives, none was perhaps more honest, ingenuous and bluntly outspoken in his views than Taft. He had neither political instinct nor political ability, and he entirely lacked that superfine caution and cunning temporizing that marks the practiced politician. His father had been a corporation lawyer and so had he and his brother Henry W. Taft had represented the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. In his class instincts reenforced by