Field was very much an outsider on the court, and despised by Waite. As Graham notes, "Field had repeatedly embarrassed Waite and the Court by close association with the Southern Pacific proprietors and by zeal and bias in their behalf. He had thought nothing of pressuring Waite for assignment of opinions in various railroad cases, of placing his friends as counsel for the road in upcoming cases, of hinting at times he and they should take, even of passing on to such counsel in the undecided San Mateo case "certain memoranda which had been handed me by two of the Judges.'"
Field had presidential ambitions, and was relying on the railroads to back him. He'd publicly announced on several occasions that if he were elected President he'd enlarge the size of the Supreme Court to 22 so he could pack it with "able and conservative men."
Field also thought poorly of Waite, calling him upon his appointment "His Accidency" and "that experiment" of Ulysses Grant. Waite didn't have the social graces of Fields, who was often described as a "popinjay," and even though he'd been a lawyer for the railroads and others, the record appears to show that Waite did his best to be a truly impartial Chief Justice during his tenure, eventually literally working himself to death.
But Field was a grandstander, who served on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals of California at the same time he was a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. It was often his "corporations are a person" decisions in California cases that led them to reappear before the U.S. Supreme Court - no accident on Field's part - including the San Mateo case in 1882 and the Santa Clara County case in 1886.
And when the justices did not decide (contrary to what Court Reporter Davis published months after the decision) that constitutional issues were involved in the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case, Justice Field was incensed. In his concurring opinion to the Santa Clara case, even though he's agreeing with the finding that fence posts should have a different tax rate than railroad land, he's clearly upset that the issue of corporate personhood was not addressed or answered in the case. He wrote:
[The court had failed in] its duty to decide the important constitution questions involved, and particularly the one which was so fully considered in the Circuit Court [where Field was also the judge], and elaborately argued here, that in the assessment, upon which the taxes claimed were levied, an unlawful and unjust discrimination was made"-and to that extent depriving it [the railroad "person"] of the equal protection of the laws. At the present day nearly all great enterprises are conducted by corporations"- [a] vast portion of the wealth "-is in their hands. It is, therefore, of the greatest interest to them whether their property is subject to the same rules of assessment and taxation as like property of natural persons"-whether the State"-may prescribe rules for the valuation of property for taxation which will vary according as it is held by individuals or by corporations. The question is of transcendent importance, and it will come here and continue to come until it is authoritatively decided in harmony with the great constitutional amendment (Fourteenth) which insures to every person, whatever his position or association, the equal protection of the laws; and that necessarily implies freedom from the imposition of unequal burdens under the same conditions.
In Everyman's Constitution, Graham documents scores of additional attempts by Supreme Court Justice Field to influence or even suborn the legal process to the benefit of his open patrons, the railroad corporations. Field's personal letters, revealed nearly a century after his death, show that his motivations, in addition to wealth and fame, were Presidential aspirations - he wrote about his hopes that in 1880 and 1884 the railroads would finance his rise to the Presidency, which may explain his zeal to please his potential financiers in 1882 in the San Mateo case and the 1886 Santa Clara case .
So, this conspiracy theory goes, after the case was decided - without reference to corporations being persons and without anybody on the court except Field agreeing with Sanderson's railroad arguments that they were persons under the Fourteenth Amendment - Justice Field took it upon himself to make sure the court's record was slightly revised: it wouldn't be published until J.C. Bancroft Davis submitted his manuscript of the Court's proceedings (titled "United States Reports") to his publisher, Banks & Brothers in New York, in 1887, and not released until Waite's death in 1888 or later.
After all, Waite's comments to reporter Davis were a bit ambiguous - although he was explicit that no constitutional issue had been decided. Nonetheless, Recorder Davis, with his instruction from Waite that Davis, himself, should "determine whether anything need be said"-in the report," may well have even welcomed the input of Field. And since Field, acting as the judge of the Ninth Circuit in California, had already and repeatedly ruled that corporations were persons under the Fourteenth Amendment, it doesn't take much imagination to guess what Field would have suggested Court Recorder Davis include in the transcript, perhaps even offering the language, curiously matching his own language in previous lower court cases.
Graham and McGrath, two of the preeminent scholars of the twentieth century (Graham on this issue, and McGrath also Waite's biographer), both agree that this is the most likely scenario. At the suggestion of Justice Field, almost certainly unknown to Waite, "a few sentences" were inserted into Davis's final written record "to clarify" the decision. It wasn't until a year or more later, when Waite was fatally ill, that the lawyers for the railroads safely announced they had seized control of vital rights in the United States Constitution.
The Hartmann theory
Court recorders had a very different role in the 19th Century than court reporters do today.
It wasn't until 1913 that the Stenograph machine was invented to automate the work of court reporters. Prior to that time, notes were kept in a variety of shorthand forms, both institutionalized and informal. Thus, the memory of the reporter, and his (in the 19th century nearly all were men) understanding of the case before him, was essentially to a clear and informed record being made for posterity.
Being a recorder for the Supreme Court was also not simply a stenographic or recording position. It was a job of high status and high pay. Although the Chief Justice in 1886 earned $10,500 a year, and the Associate Justices earned $10,000 per year, the Recorder of the Court could expect an income over $12,000 per year, between his salary and his royalties from publishing the United States Reports. And the status of the job was substantial, as Magrath notes: "In those days the reportership was a coveted position, attracting men of public stature who associated as equals with the justices"-"
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
