Chief Justice Taft at the Helm

The office of Chief Justice carries scant inherent powers. The Chief Justice manages the docket, presents the cases in conference, and guides the discussion. When in the majority, he assigns the writing of opinions. Whatever influence he exerts in the exercise of these prerogatives rests less on formal authority than on elusive personal characteristics. Charles Evans Hughes, who had served as Associate Justice from 1910 to 1916 and later had been able to observe Taft\u27s role in the Court over a period of seven years, considered the Chief Justice the most important judicial officer in the world. His actual power, Hughes wrote in 1928, depended upon the strength of his character and the demonstration of his ability in the intimate relations of the judges. The office affords special opportunity for leadership. \u27Certain Chief Justices, notably Harlan Fiske Stone, have held the office in low esteem. Disparaging its duties as janitorial, as never enlarging the occupant\u27s individual capacity for judicial work, he complained that the office absorbs time and energies I should like to devote to what I consider more important things. Not so with William Howard Taft. At the time of his appointment, it was confidently predicted that certain personal qualifications alone would make him an effective leader

Charles Evans Hughes: An Appeal to the Bar of History

Preparations for this Pulitzer prize-winning biography began in 1932 when a Princeton University undergraduate, Henry C. Beerits, took Hughes\u27 public career as the topic of his senior thesis. On the suggestion of friends and instructors Beerits sent his sympathetic, uncritical essay to the Chief Justice. Evidently much pleased, Hughes promptly invited the youthful author to Washington, where he spent nearly a year arranging the Justice\u27s public papers. Many sessions were spent together; the Chief Justice reminisced at great length, all this being noted down and turned over to Mr. Pusey. After retirement in 1941 the Chief Justice wrote several hundred pages of biographical notes, and had long talks with his biographer