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Supreme
Court Justices
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Morrison Waite (1816-1888) |
 Morrison
Waite was born in Lyme, Connecticut on November 29, 1816. His father was
a chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court of errors. Waite
graduated from Yale in 1837, and read law with his father. He then moved
to Ohio to practice law. Waite was a Whig legislator in Ohio in the late
1840s, and helped found the Republican Party in Ohio in 1856. He was a
successful lawyer, but not known outside of Ohio. Waite came to national
attention when he was appointed with two others to represent the United
States before the Geneva Arbitration Panel. The lawyers were successful,
gaining a $15 million award. After the death of
Salmon P. Chase in 1873, President Ulysses S. Grant eventually
offered the post to Waite, who accepted. Waite favored state police
power (traditionally, health, safety, welfare and morals) regulation of
the economy during his 15 years on the Court. He wrote the Court's
opinion in
Munn v. Illinois, in which the Court sustained an Illinois law
regulating maximum rates of grain elevators (where grain was stored
before it was shipped from Chicago elsewhere), on the ground that the
grain elevator business was "affected with a public interest." Waite was
also the author of the Court's decision in Reynolds v. United States
(1879), in which the Court upheld the criminalization of polygamy in the
Territory of Utah. In general, Waite was an awkward writer. Waite was a
member of the Court that strictly interpreted Reconstruction Civil
Rights legislation.
Waite died on March 23, 1888. In 1840, Waite married Amelia Warner. |
