Page 13 - Pierce County Lawyer - January February 2024

Benjamin Harrison was also involved with Lambdin Milligan who, after his release, filed suit against the military commission who tried him and various others involved in his arrest. Harrison was part of the defense team and, although Milligan won, his verdict was for $5.00 and costs. Harrison had a fairly lively practice before the Supreme Court while he was serving as a U.S. Senator. Most of his cases appear to be fairly routine commercial cases. Following his presidency, Harrison had
a number of cases where his fees ran between $10,000 and $25,000.10
William Howard Taft not only argued cases before the Supreme Court as Solicitor General, he also heard cases as Chief Justice of the United States. He argued at least eighteen cases before the Supreme Court and won most of them. There do not
seem to have been any cases of great constitutional magnitude for him to argue during that time. As solicitor general he began the practice of confession of error, a device used by the government when it won at the lower court but now believed that case was wrongly decided.
Taft resigned as Solicitor General in 1892 to become Chief Judge of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. Taft’s lifelong goal was to sit on the Supreme Court. When President McKinley called him to the White House, he thought an appointment might be his; instead, he was asked to head the commission on governing the Philippines. He accepted that job on McKinley’s assurance that he would get the next appointment to the Supreme Court. Heading this commission led to the
10 That’s about $850,000 today.
Governorship of Cuba11 which led to becoming Secretary of the Army, which led to becoming President12. After his defeat. Taft taught at Yale Law School until, happy day, he was finally appointed to the Supreme Court.13 He was the first Chief Justice to have graduated from law school.
Our final Presidential Advocate is John Quincy Adams. He served a single term in the Senate and argued before the Supreme Court. A typical case dealt with the scope of an insurance policy14. He was appointed Ambassador to Russia 1809, then to Britain in 1815.15 He finally returned to the United States to be Monroe’s Secretary of State and then was elected President in 1824. He was defeated in 1828, and after two years of private life he returned to public service as a representative from Massachusetts. He served nine terms. In 1841 he argued the case for the enslaved Africans in U.S. v. Amistad. As we know from the book and movie, he won.
There you are—eight lawyers, eight Presidents. Only one of them, Lincoln, is ranked as one of the great Presidents—the rest are generally squarely in the middle of Presidential rankings. If I have piqued your curiosity you might look at
the article cited in note 3 or use your search engines (which hopefully won’t add George Washington to this list) to find out more. I learned much more than this space would contain so there’s lots out there.
11 Both the Philippine and Cuban appointments were the result of the Spanish-Amer- ican War.
12 Note that Taft appointed six Supreme Court justices, more than anyone except Washington (who started from scratch) and Franklin Roosevelt who had three plus terms to do it. He declined to take any cases before judges he had appointed, unlike Harrison and Cleveland.
13 His colleagues on the Court included two Justices he had appointed and Louis Brandeis, whose appointment he had opposed while he was teaching at Yale.
14 Church v. Hubbart
15 He helped to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, ending the war of 1812. Madison appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1811, but he declined.
John Weaver is a retired professor of law from Seattle University School of Law. He began teaching at UPS School of Law in 1972. He is a resident of Tacoma and serves as the law school liaison to the Tacoma-Pierce County Bar Association.
January/February 2024 | PIERCE COUNTY LAWYER 13