Page 12 - Pierce County Lawyer - January February 2024

Presidents’ Day(s) in Court
By Professor John Weaver, ret.
This issue of the magazine is due out around Presidents’ Day,1 so I first thought of an article on Presidents who were lawyers. It turned out there have been twenty-
seven of them, beginning with John Adams and extending to the present day.2 So I narrowed it to Presidents who argued before the U.S. Supreme Court; do you know how many that is? It’s eight.3
` John Quincy Adams ` James K. Polk
` Abraham Lincoln
` James A. Garfield
` Benjamin Harrison
` Grover Cleveland
` William Howard Taft ` Richard Nixon
Most of the cases they argued are not well-known; you may recognize some of them, but not many.4 You will know the names of the Presidents. Let’s begin with those who argued only one case before the Court.
James K. Polk was a congressman from Tennessee when he argued the case of Williams v. Norris. This was a dispute over title to land in Tennessee that depended upon some fine points of the law with respect to land grants from states.5
Abraham Lincoln argued only once before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1848 when he was in Washington D.C. for his single term in Congress. It was Fletcher v. Peck, an estate case that turned on the application of the statute of limitations.6 It’s fairly simple. Other cases where Lincoln was an advocate seem to have drawn more attention. See Pierce County Bar Magazine January-February 2022 for an article by this author.
Polk and Lincoln argued their Supreme Court cases before they became Presidents. Grover Cleveland was the first to argue in front of Justices he had appointed. Both of them dissented from an opinion in favor of his client. His single case came during the break between his terms as President.7 Peake v. New Orleans involved certain bonds issued by the city of New Orleans for drainage projects.
Our final one time Supreme Court advocate is Richard Nixon. After his failed runs for the Presidency and for
1 At least in Washington there’s an apostrophe in the name of the holiday.
2 My computer, aided by artificial intelligence (?) insisted that George Washington
was a lawyer; he was not. he was a surveyor and a planter.
3 I owe much of what I found out to Allen Sharp, Presidents as Supreme Court Advo- cates Before and After the White House 28 J. Sup. Ct. Hist 116 (2003).
4 I am not going to give citations for the cases cited; it takes up too much room. If you’re interested, you can Google the case names.
5 These cases and disputes over grants were a frequent source of lawsuits in what was then the western part of the United States. The points are so fine I’m not sure I understand them.
6 He also signed on two briefs but did not argue either of them.
7 Cleveland always seems to have been counted twice as the 22d and 24th Presi- dent.
Governor of California, Nixon joined a long-established New York law firm. His moment came in Time v. Hill,8 an action for invasion of privacy casting the Hills in a false light by relating the fictional incidents in a play to their real-life ordeal. Nixon lost the case although his performance at oral argument was widely praised.
There remain four Presidential advocates who argued multiple cases.
Lambdin Milligan was a confederate sympathizer who was charged with attempting to foment a rebellion in Indiana during the Civil War. He was convicted by a military tribunal (in absentia; he had fled to Canada) and sentenced to death. He applied for a writ of habeas corpus based on a denial of his right to trial by jury. James Garfield, along with a number of other prominent lawyers, successfully appealed the denial of the writ to the Supreme Court. The opinion has echoed down through the Second World War and the Guantanamo detentions. Garfield suffered politically as a Republican, but obviously recovered and was elected President in 1880.
Before his election Garfield had a substantial Supreme Court practice with cases ranging from the seizure of alcoholic spirits to disputes between a railroad and church, to considering whether a horse delivered to an agent could be the payment
of a life insurance premium. It couldn’t.9
8 In 1952 the Hill Family were taken hostage inside their home by three escaped convicts. This incident led to a novel, the Desperate Hours, which was then made into a play and then a movie. The Hills sued Life Magazine (published by Time, Inc.).
9 The agent’s act was ultra vires and a fraud on the company. Hoffman v. John Hancock Mutual Life Inc. Co.
12 PIERCE COUNTY LAWYER | January/February 2024