Evening star., 1948-08-29
Charles Evans Huqhes

In the very best sense of the term,
Charles Evans Hughes was a great Amer
lean.
This country was in the throes of Civil
War when he was born at Glens Falls,
N. Y, eighty-six years ago. That conflict,
ending when he was three years old, set
tied the issue of the divisibility of the
Union and posed for the young men of Mr..
Hughes generation a challenging prob
lem in government. It became necessary,
with the emergence of a dominant Federal
authority, to fashion central government
that could function within the limitations
imposed by the Constitution and at the
same time serve the needs of the people
There has not yet been any final answer to
this problem, but much progress has been
made, ,~and in this forward movement Mr.
Hughes consistently played an influential
and constructive part.
After some twenty years as private
lawyer and teacher Mr.. Hughes turned to
public service in New York. His investi-
cations of New York City gas companies
and life insurance companies operating
in the State brought him into prominence
and led to two elections as Governor of
New York. He resigned during his second
term to accept appointment to the Su-
preme Court, serving on that bench until
1915, when, at the age of f1fty-four, he re-
signed to run against Woodrow Wilson for
the presidency.
Defeated In that contest when California
went Democratic by 1000 votes, Mr..
Hughes returned to private life. But not
for long. President Harding called him
into his cabinet as Secretary of State, and
he remained there under President Cool
idge. In 1880, following the death of
William Howard Taft, he was appointed
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. and
it is in that role that he is best remem-
bered by the present generation of Amer
leans
The first few years following his return
to the bench were not especially eventful.
But by 1884 the court found itself on the
political firing line. Statutes born of the
depression and the New Deal philosophy
were coming up for decision, and the old
question of where the power of the central
government ends and that of the States be-
gins was bobbing up to agitate the lives of
the justices who we're beginning to be
known as "the nine old men" Shortly after
President Roosevelt had been elected for
a second term the "court-packing" bill was
put before the Congress and it became all
too clear that the independence of the
judiciary was at stake.
The Chief Justice fought this encroach-
ment with all the weapons he could prop
erly employ, and in the end the effort to
enlarge the court failed. But victory in
this political struggle did not come cheap
ly. The philosophy of a majority of the
justices underwent change which
granted broad constitutional power to the
Federal Government. And this, coupled
with the processes of time and the ap-
pointment of new judges, has virtually OBJ
liberated the constitutional point of view
which prevailed in the court when Mr..
Hughes became Chief Justice.
Whether the Chief Justice himself made
concessions in the interests of preserving
the integrity of the judiciary is a matter
of opinion. But If he moderated his own
views, or prevailed upon any of his as
sociates to do so, he did not depart from
the guiding principle that it was the func-
ton of the law makers, not the judges, to
pass upon the wisdom of a statute. All
that the latter could do, in his judgment,
was to take the statute as it came to the
court and determine whether its enact
ment lay within the constitutional power
of the legislature. If so, that was the end
of the matter.
Through this capacity for subordination
of personal predictions, Mr.. Hughes, for
many people, came to personify the Amer
lean concept of justice. If this be exag-
gerated, still he surely belongs with that
little company of men who have served
their country WELL and as the problems of
troubled future bear down upon us one
can most earnestly wish that there were
more like him.
I'm Brazil jungle tribe gnaws crude