Presidents in Retirement: William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft suffered the indignity of not only losing his bid for re-election, but of finishing third in the contest, behind the victor Woodrow Wilson and also behind third party candidate Theodore Roosevelt, who had once been Taft's friend, and who was now his biggest critic.
With no pension or other compensation to expect from the government after leaving the White House, Taft considered a return to his real passion, the practice of law. But there was a problem with that. Taft had appointed many federal judges, including a majority of the Supreme Court, so this would raise problems with conflict of interest at every federal court appearance, and a principled man like Taft would recognize these. Fortunately, Taft received an offer for him to become Kent Professor of Law and Legal History at Yale Law School, his alma mater. He took a month's vacation in Georgia for the rest of the month of March, 1913, before showing up for his new job in New Haven on April 1, 1913.
Taft was warmly welcomed at Yale. He received a rousing reception. By now it was too late in the current semester for him to teach a course, so he prepared eight lectures on "Questions of Modern Government", which he delivered in May. Taft also gave paid speeches and wrote articles for magazines. While at Yale, in 1916 he wrote the treatise, Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers.
Taft had become president of the Lincoln Memorial Commission while still in office. After he was defeated in his bid for re-election, some Democrats proposed removing Taft from this post and replacing him with a Democrat. Taft remarked that unlike losing the presidency, losing this job would hurt. The project went ahead, and almost a decade later, Taft would dedicate the Lincoln Memorial as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1922. (But let's not get ahead of ourselves.)
In 1913, Taft was elected to a one-year term as president of the American Bar Association.
Taft stayed on good terms with his successor Woodrow Wilson and would not criticize the new President publicly, other than on a few select issues such as Wilson's policy in the Philippines. Taft was also upset when Wilson filled a vacancy on the Supreme Court with Louis Brandeis, a political enemy of Taft's. Taft submitted a letter signed by himself and other former ABA presidents, stating that Brandeis was not fit to serve on the Supreme Court, but this was to no avail. The Democratic-controlled Senate confirmed Brandeis.
The relationship between Taft and Roosevelt remained strained, though author Doris Kearns Goodwin maintains that the two did reconcile their differences later in life. The two men met only once in the first three years of the Wilson presidency, at a funeral at Yale. They exchanged pleasantries, politely but formally.
Taft served as president of the League to Enforce Peace. He hoped to prevent wars through an international association of nations. As World War I was taking place in Europe, Taft sent Wilson a note of support for his foreign policy in 1915. He also asked Wilson to address the League and Wilson accepted Taft's invitation. Wilson spoke in May 1916 of a postwar international organization that could prevent future wars from taking place.
In 1916 Taft supported the efforts to get Justice Charles Evans Hughes to resign from the Supreme Court bench (where Taft had appointed him in 1910) and accept the Republican presidential nomination. Hughes agreed and he tried to get Roosevelt and Taft to reconcile, as a united effort was needed to defeat Wilson. This occurred on October 3, 1916 in New York, but Roosevelt allowed only a handshake, and no words were exchanged. Wilson narrowly won reelection.
In March 1917, Taft demonstrated public support for the US war effort by joining the Connecticut State Guard, a state defense force organized to carry out the state duties of the Connecticut State National Guard while the National Guard served on active duty. When Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany in April 1917, Taft was an enthusiastic supporter. He was chairman of the American Red Cross's executive committee. In August 1917, when President Wilson conferred military titles on executives of the Red Cross in order to provide them with additional authority to use in carrying out their wartime responsibilities, and Taft was appointed as a Major General. During the war, Taft took leave from Yale in order to serve as co-chairman of the National War Labor Board. It was that body's role to try to foster good relations between industry owners and their workers.
In February 1918, RNC chairman Will Hayes approached Taft to make yet another effort at reconciliation with Roosevelt. Taft was at Palmer House in Chicago and he learned that Roosevelt was there having dinner there. When Taft walked in, the two men publicly embraced and the room broke out in applause. However it does not appear that they two spent any further time together before Roosevelt died in January 1919. Taft later wrote, "Had he died in a hostile state of mind toward me, I would have mourned the fact all my life. I loved him always and cherish his memory."
Taft broke with his party by supporting Wilson's proposed establishment of a League of Nations. This caused some Republicans to call Taft a Wilson supporter and a traitor to his party. The Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles.
During the 1920 election campaign, Taft supported the Republican ticket of Senator Warren Harding of Ohio and Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts, After the two were elected, Taft was among those asked to come to the Harding's home in Marion, Ohio to advise him on appointments. The the two men met there on December 24, 1920. Harding asked if Taft would accept appointment to the Supreme Court. Taft said that he could accept only the chief justice position. Taft stated that Chief Justice White had often told him he was keeping the position for Taft until a Republican held the White House.
White was in failing health. Taft called on the chief justice on March 26, 1921 and found White ill, but still carrying on his work and not talking of retiring. White did not retire. He died in office on May 19, 1921. Taft issued a tribute to the man he had appointed to the center seat and hopes he would be White's successor. Despite widespread speculation that Taft would be the pick, Harding did not make an immediate appointment. Harding had also promised former Utah senator George Sutherland a seat on the Supreme Court and he was also considering a proposal by Justice William Day to make him chief justice for six months before retiring. Attorney General Harry Daugherty supported Taft's candidacy, and urged Harding to fill the vacancy with Taft. Harding chose Taft for the post on June 30, 1921. The Senate confirmed Taft the same day, 61-4, without any committee hearings and after a brief debate. Three progressive Republicans and one southern Democrat voted against Taft's appointment. Taft was sworn in on July 11, he became the first and to date only person to serve both as president and chief justice.
The Supreme Court under Taft compiled a conservative record, often to the few liberals on the court. Among the many decisions Taft wrote included his majority opinion in the 1926 case Myers v. United States in which Taft wrote that Congress could not require the president to get Senate approval before removing an appointee. Taft noted that there is no restriction of the president's power to remove officials in the Constitution.
As Chief Justice, Taft used the power of his position to influence the decisions of his colleagues, urging unanimity and discouraging dissents. Taft saw nothing wrong with making his views on possible appointments to the Court known to the White House, and was annoyed when he was criticized in the press. Taft was initially a firm supporter of President Coolidge after Harding's death in 1923, but became disappointed with Coolidge's appointments to office and to the bench. He felt the same way about Coolidge's successor, Herbert Hoover.
By 1923, Taft's opinion of his liberal colleague Louis Brandeis had changed, Taft admired Brandeis for being a hard worker.
Taft felt that he needed an administrative staff, arguing that the Chief Justice was responsible for the federal courts. He also felt that he should be empowered to temporarily reassign judges. He thought that the federal courts had been poorly run. Many of the lower courts had lengthy backlogs, and so did the Supreme Court. Taft met with Attorney General Daugherty about new legislation, he appeared before congressional hearings, wrote articles in legal periodicals and gave speeches across the country. When Congress convened in December 1921, a bill was introduced for 24 new judges, to empower the Chief Justice to move judges temporarily to eliminate the delays, and to have him chair a body consisting of the senior appellate judge of each circuit. It passed the bill in September 1922.
The Supreme Court's docket was congested with war litigation and laws that allowed a party defeated in the circuit court of appeals to have the case decided by the Supreme Court if a constitutional question was involved. Taft believed an appeal should usually be settled by the circuit court, with only cases of major import decided by the justices. He and other Supreme Court members proposed legislation to make most of the Court's docket discretionary, with a case getting full consideration by the justices only if they granted a writ of certiorari. Congress took three years to consider the matter, but these changes became law in February 1925. By late the following year, Taft was able to show that the backlog was shrinking.
When Taft became Chief Justice, the Court did not have its own building. It met in the Capitol. Its offices were cluttered and overcrowded. In 1925, Taft began a fight to get the Court a building, and two years later Congress appropriated money to purchase the land, to the east of the Capitol. Taft had hoped to see the Court move into its new building, but it did not do so until 1935, after Taft's death.
Taft had once been the heaviest President, with his weight peaking at 340 pounds by the end of his Presidency. He was 5'11" tall. His health had been declining, so when Taft became Chief Justice he undertook a fitness routine. He walked 3 miles from his home to the Capitol and back every day. He followed a weight loss program and hired the British doctor N. E. York-Davies as a dietary advisor. The two men corresponded regularly for over twenty years, and Taft kept a daily record of his weight, food intake, and physical activity. Taft said in a Dec. 12, 1913, interview. "When I left Washington for Augusta, I weighed exactly 340 pounds. This morning I weighed myself again and I tipped the scale at exactly 270.8 pounds … I certainly feel fit and fine as a result of it."
Taft recited part of the oath of office incorrectly at Herbert Hoover's inauguration in March of 1929. Taft wrote, "my memory is not always accurate and one sometimes becomes a little uncertain." His health gradually declined over the term of his chief justiceship. Taft was worried that if he retired his replacement would be chosen by President Herbert Hoover, whom Taft considered too progressive. In a letter to his brother Horace, Taft wrote "I am older and slower and less acute and more confused. However, as long as things continue as they are, and I am able to answer to my place, I must stay on the court in order to prevent the Bolsheviki from getting control".
Taft traveled to Cincinnati to attend the funeral of his brother Charles, who died on December 31, 1929. The trip took a toll on Taft's health, and when the court reconvened on January 6, 1930, Taft had not returned to Washington yet. Taft went to Asheville, North Carolina for a rest, but his health did not improve. By the end of January, he could barely speak and was experiencing hallucinations. He refused to resign until he had Herbert Hoover's assurance that Charles Evans Hughes would be chosen as the new Chief Justice of the Court. Having received Hoover's word, Taft resigned as chief justice on February 3, 1930.
Taft returned to Washington after his resignation. He had barely enough strength to sign a reply to a letter of tribute from the eight associate justices. He died at his home in Washington, D.C., on March 8, 1930, at age 72, most likely from heart disease, inflammation of the liver, and high blood pressure.
Taft's body lay in state at the US Capitol rotunda. On March 11, he became the first president and first member of the Supreme Court to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.