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Supreme
Court Justices
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Rufus Peckham (1838-1909) |
 Rufus
Peckham was born in Albany, New York, on November 8, 1838. After reading
for the bar in his father's law office, Peckham was admitted to practice
law in Albany in 1859. After a decade of private practice, Peckham was
the district attorney in Albany from 1869-72. He then returned to
private practice for a decade. In 1883, Peckham was elected a trial
judge (New York Supreme Court). Three years later, Peckham was elected
to the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, where
he remained a judge for nearly a decade.
In early 1894, Rufus Peckham's brother Wheeler was nominated to the Court by President Grover Cleveland to replace the deceased Samuel Blatchford, a New Yorker, who had died on July 7, 1893. Unfortunately for Wheeler, and probably the United States as well, Wheeler was caught in the middle of a patronage dispute between President Cleveland and New York Senator David Hill, both Democrats. Hill had already defeated Cleveland's nomination of William Hornblower to replace Blatchford when Wheeler Peckham was nominated. Hill again claim senatorial courtesy in urging the rejection of Wheeler Peckham. The Senate did so. Cleveland then nominated Louisiana Senator Edward White, to which the Senate concurred. The next year, 1895, Howell Jackson died, and Cleveland nominated Wheeler Peckham's younger brother Rufus. Senator Hill, weakened politically, did not object, and Rufus Peckham was confirmed in December 1895. He took his oath of office in January 1896. Peckham is known for his strong support of substantive due process claims, part of what is called laissez-faire constitutionalism. Peckham wrote the Court's opinions in Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897) and Lochner v. New York (1905), and was a member of the majority in Adair v. United States (1908), three of four cases that were later disparaged by legal progressives as the "Allgeyer-Lochner-Adair-Coppage" line of cases. [Peckham died before the Court decided the last of those cases Coppage v. Kansas (1915), a case declaring Kansas' "yellow dog" prohibition unconstitutional. The "yellow dog" provision in a labor contract allowed an employer to condition employment on the employee's agreement never to join a labor union. Adair and Coppage held federal and state laws barring such provisions in labor agreements unconstitutional.] In my view, Allgeyer is defensible in result, and largely in opinion, on grounds both of federalism and individual liberty. But, because Peckham was a symbol of much that was "wrong" with the Court during the heyday of substantive due process, lumping these cases together was part of the progressive effort to demonize the turn of the century Court. In Lochner, his most famous opinion, Peckham raises the specter of communism for declaring the maximum hour law in bakeries unconstitutional. Peckham also silently joined the majority in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), another reason for later generations to excoriate his jurisprudence. Peckham died on October 24, 1909, at age 70. |
