Taft, William Howard

Born September 15, 1857, in Cincinnati, OH
Died March 8, 1930, in Washington, DC

Federal Judicial Service:
Judge, U.S. Circuit Courts for the Sixth Circuit
Nominated by Benjamin Harrison on December 16, 1891, to a new seat authorized by 26 Stat. 826. Confirmed by the Senate on March 17, 1892, and received commission on March 17, 1892. Service terminated on March 15, 1900, due to resignation.

Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
Nominated by Benjamin Harrison on December 16, 1891, to a new seat authorized by 26 Stat. 826. Confirmed by the Senate on March 17, 1892, and received commission on March 17, 1892. Service terminated on March 15, 1900, due to resignation.

Chief Justice, Supreme Court of the United States
Nominated by Warren G. Harding on June 30, 1921, to a seat vacated by Edward Douglass White. Confirmed by the Senate on June 30, 1921, and received commission on June 30, 1921. Service terminated on February 3, 1930, due to resignation.

Supreme Court Oath:
July 11, 1921

Allotment as Circuit Justice:

Fourth Circuit, October 24, 1921-February 3, 1930

Education:
Yale College, B.A., 1878
Cincinnati Law School (now University of Cincinnati College of Law), LL.B., 1880

Professional Career:

Assistant prosecutor, Hamilton County, Ohio, 1881-1883
Collector of internal revenue, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1882
Private practice, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1883-1887
Assistant county solicitor, Hamilton County, Ohio, 1885-1887
Judge, Superior Court of Cincinnati [Ohio], 1887-1890
Solicitor general of the United States, 1890-1892
Professor and dean, University of Cincinnati, 1896-1900
President, U.S. Philippine Commission, 1900-1901
Civil governor, Philippine Islands, 1901-1904
Secretary of War, 1904-1908
President of the United States, 1909-1913
Kent professor of law, Yale University, 1913-1921
Presiding officer, Conference of Senior Circuit Judges (now Judicial Conference of the United States), 1922-1929

Bibliography

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Anderson, Donald F. “Building National Consensus: The Career of William Howard Taft.” University of Cincinnati, vol. 68, no. 2 (Winter 2000): 323-56.

________. “The Legacy of William Howard Taft.” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 1 (Winter 1982): 26-33.

________. William Howard Taft: A Conservative’s Conception of the Presidency. Norwalk: Conn.: Easton Press, 1968.

Anderson, Judith Icke. William Howard Taft: An Intimate History. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1981.

Armstrong, Walter P. “Letters of Roommates: William H. Taft and George B. Edwards.” American Bar Association Journal, vol. 34, no. 5 (May 1948): 383-5.

Arnold, Peri E. Remaking the Presidency: Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson, 1901-1916. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2009.

Ballard, Rene N. “The Administrative Theory of William Howard Taft.” Western political Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 1 (Mar. 1954): 65-74.

Barker, Charles Edwin. With President Taft in the White House: Memories of William Howard Taft. Chicago: A. Kroch, 1947.

Bromley, Michael L. William Howard Taft and the First Motoring Presidency, 1909-1913. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2003.

Burns, Adam D. Retentionist in Chief: William Howard Taft and the Question Philippine Independence, 1912-1916.” Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, vol. 61, no. 2 (Jun. 2013): 163-92.

Burton, David H. The Learned Presidency: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1989.

________. Taft, Holmes and the 1920s Court: An Appraisal. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998.

________. Taft, Roosevelt, and the Limits of Friendship. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 2005.

________. William Howard Taft: Confident Peacemaker. Philadelphia: St. Joseph’s University Press, 2004.

________. William Howard Taft, In the Public Service. Malabar, Fla.: R.E. Krieger Pub. Co., 1986.

Campbell, John P. “Taft, Roosevelt, and the Arbitration Treaties of 1911.” Journal of American History, vol. 53, no. 2 (Sept. 1966): 279-98.

Cotton, Edward Howe. William Howard Taft: A Character Study. Boston: Beacon Press, 1932.

Coletta, Paolo Enrico. The Presidency of William Howard Taft. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1973.

Coulter, E. Merton. “The Attempt of William Howard Taft to Break the Solid South.” Georgia Historical Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 2 (Jun. 1935): 134-44.

Crane, R. Newton. “President Taft.” Journal of Comparative Legislation, vol. 12, no. 1 (1911): 9-10.

Crowe, Justin. “The Forging of Judicial Autonomy: Political Entrepreneurship and the Reforms of William Howard Taft.” Journal of Politics, vol. 69, no. 1 (Feb. 2007): 73-87.

Davies, Ross E. “Debate and Switch: William Howard Taft on Law as a Vocation.” Journal of Law, vol. 6, no. 1 (2016): 1-8.

Davis, Oscar King. William Howard Taft: The Man of the Hour: His Biography and His Views on the Great Questions of Today. Philadelphia: P.W. Ziegler Co., 1908.

Dickinson, J.M. “Chief Justice William Howard Taft.” American Bar Association Journal, vol. 7, no. 7 (1921): 331-32.

Duffy, Herbert S. William Howard Taft. New York: Minton, Balch & Co., 1930.

Farrell, John T. “Background of the Taft Mission to Rome II.” Catholic Historical Review, vol. 37, no. 1 (Apr. 1951): 1-22.

Fish, Peter G. “William Howard Taft and Charles Evans Hughes: Conservative Politicians as Chief Judicial Reformers.” Supreme Court Review, vol. 1975 (1975): 123-46.

Gartner, Lloyd P. “The Correspondence of Mayer Sulzberger and William Howard Taft.” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, vol. 46/47 (1979-1980): 121-39.

Goodwin, Doris Kearns. The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013.

Gould, Lewis L. Chief Executive to Chief Justice: Taft Betwixt the White House and the Supreme Court. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2014.

________. “Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Disputed Delegates in 1912: Texas as a Test Case.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 80, no. 1 (Jul. 1976): 33-56.

________. The William Howard Taft Presidency. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2009.

Hahn, Harlan. “President Taft and the Discipline of Patronage.” Journal of Politics, vol. 28, no. 2 (May 1966): 368-90.

Hansbrough, Henry Clay. The Wreck: An Historical and a Critical Study of Administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and of William Howard Taft. New York: Neale Pub. Co., 1913.

Howell, R.B.C. “Life and Times of William Howard Taft.” Tennessee Law Review, vol. 17, no. 3 (Apr. 1942): 281-90.

Kastenberg, Joshua. “Chief Justice William Howard Taft’s Conception of Judicial Integrity: The Legal History of Tumey v. Ohio.” Cleveland State Law Review, vol. 65, no. 3 (2017): 317-78.

Kolasky, William. “Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft: Marching Toward Armageddon.” Antitrust, vol. 27, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 97-104.

Korzi, Michael J. “Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers: A Reconsideration of William Howard Taft’s “Whig” Theory of Presidential Leadership.” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 1 (Jul. 2003): 305-24.

Kutler, Stanley I. “Chief Justice Taft and the Delusion of Judicial Exactness: A Study in Jurisprudence.” Virginia Law Review, vol. 48, no. 8 (Dec. 1962): 1407-26.

Lease, Martin Harry. “William Howard Taft and the Powers of the President.” Ph.D. Diss., Indiana University, 1961.

Ledbetter, Calvin R., Jr. “Presidential Politics in Arkansas from 1909-1912: The Visits of Taft, Roosevelt, and Wilson.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 191-210.

Lurie, Jonathon. William Howard Taft: The Travails of a Progressive Conservative. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Machale, Francis. President and Chief Justice: The Public Life and Service of William Howard Taft. Philadelphia: Dorrance and Co., 1931.

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McGowan, Carl. “Perspectives on Taft’s Tenure as Chief Justice and their Special Relevance Today.” University of Cincinnati Law Review, vol. 55, no. 4 (1987): 1143-58.

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Minger, Ralph Eldin. “Taft’s Mission to Japan: A Study in Personal Diplomacy.” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 30, no. 3 (Aug. 1961): 279-94.

________. “William Howard Taft’s Forgotten Visit to Russia.” Russian Review, vol. 22, no. 2 (Apr. 1963): 149-56.

________. William Howard Taft and United States Foreign Policy: The Apprenticeship Years, 1900-1908. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975.

________. “William Howard Taft and the United States Intervention in Cuba in 1906.” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 41, no. 1 (Feb. 1961): 75-89.

Murphy, John. “‘Back to the Constitution’: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Republican Party Division 1910-1912.” Irish Journal of American Studies, vol. 4 (1995): 109-25.

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Reid, John Gilbert. “Taft’s Telegram to Root, July 29, 1905.” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 9, no. 1 (Mar. 1940): 66-70.

Rosen, Jeffrey. William Howard Taft. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2018.

Reuter, Frank T. “William Howard Taft and the Separation of Church and State in the Philippines.” Journal of Church and State, vol. 24, no. 1 (Winter 1982): 105-18.

Schultz, L. Peter. William Howard Taft: A Constitutionalist’s View of the Presidency. Ph.D. Diss., Northern Illinois University, 1979.

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________. William Howard Taft and the Progressive Movement: A Study in Conservative Thought and Politics. Ph.D. Diss., University of Michigan, 1962.

Starr, Kenneth W. “The Supreme Court and Its Shrinking Docket: The Ghost of William Howard Taft.” Minnesota Law Review, vol. 90, no. 5 (May 2006): 1363-85.

________. “William Howard Taft: The Chief Justice as Judicial Architect.” University of Cincinnati Law Review, vol. 60, no. 4 (1992): 963-76.

Thwing, Charles Franklin. “William Howard Taft and Charles Evans Hughes.” Phi Beta Kappa Key, vol. 7, no. 7 (March 1930): 456-8.

Uelmen, Gerald F. “William Howard Taft and the Tom Campbell Riots.” Criminal Defense, vol. 9 (Jul.-Aug. 1982): 29-32.

Warren, Earl. “Chief Justice William Howard Taft.” Yale Law Journal, vol. 67, no. 3 (Jan. 1958): 353-62.

“Professor Taft is Popular.” Law Student’s Helper, vol. 22, no. 4 (Apr. 1914): 19-20.

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Manuscript Collections

Cincinnati Historical Society
Cincinnati, Ohio
William Howard Taft papers, 1857-1930.
2 ft.; finding aid; collection contains copies of personal and presidential correspondence.

Library of Congress
Washington, D.C.
William Howard Taft papers, 1784-1973.
902.5 linear ft. (676,000 items); finding aid; personal papers consisting of letters received, copies of letters sent, speeches and addresses, family papers, biographer's papers, 219 volumes of letter press copybooks (1890-1920), presidential and judicial files, and legal papers.

New York Public Library
New York, N.Y.
William Howard Taft papers, 1887-1928.
0.2 linear foot (2 folders). The collection consists of a small quantity of letters written by Taft to various individuals between 1887 and 1928. Letters concern both professional and social matters.

Ohio Historical Society
Columbus, Ohio
William H. Taft Papers. 1906-1920.
0.25 cubic foot; finding aid. Includes letters to friend William R. Nelson of Kansas City, re. Taft's campaign for nomination and election in 1908, cabinet appointments, and presidential policies including the tariff question; a speech to blacks in 1909; and letters with editorials for the Philadelphia "Public Ledger" sent to Chicago operator E. N. Moore, re. the 1920 presidential campaign, the League of Nations, and Oklahoma and North Dakota politics.

William Howard Taft presidential collection [graphic]. [ca. 1875-1920s]
0.33 cubic ft.; finding aid.

Yale University
New Haven, Conn.
William H. Taft lecture notes and examinations on constitutional law, Yale Law School, 1913-1916.
2 v.; 27 cm.

Federal Judicial Center

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Taft, William Howard