Chief Justice John Rutledge
Today’s Justice of the Day is: JOHN RUTLEDGE. Chief Justice Rutledge took the Judicial Oath to officially be promoted to the office of Chief Justice of the United States on this day, August 12, in 1795.
Chief Justice Rutledge was born on September 18, 1739, in Charleston, South Carolina, the state where he was raised, spent virtually his entire professional life, and from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States both times he was nominated. He studied law at Middle Temple in London, England, one of four institutions at the time that, in addition to governing the practices of lawyers in that country, was allowed to educated students in preparation for joining the bar.
Chief Justice Rutledge entered private practice in his home town of Charleston after returning from England, and became a Member of the South Carolina Commons House of Assembly from 1761 until 1776, when he served on the South Carolina Council of Safety for that year and began a two year term as President of the South Carolina House of Representatives. During his time in the House of Assembly, he was also Attorney General pro tempore of South Carolina (from 1764 to 1765), and a Delegate to both the Stamp Act Congress (in 1765) and later the Continental Congress (from 1774 to 1776, and then again from 1782 to 1783). Chief Justice Rutledge became Governor of South Carolina in 1779, and remained in that office until 1782, the same year during which he served in the South Carolina House of Representatives. In addition to seeing his return to the South Carolina House after a brief absence, the year 1784 also saw him begin serving as a Judge of the Chancery Court of South Carolina; he would go on to leave both positions in 1790. Chief Justice Rutledge was a Delegate to the Federal Constitutional Convention in 1787, and served as a Member of the South Carolina Convention to Ratify the United States Constitution the following year, his last position before joining the SCUS as an Associate Justice. In between his two terms on the SCUS, he became Chief Justice of the South Carolina Court of Common Pleas.
Chief Justice Rutledge was nominated by President George Washington to be an Associate Justice on September 24, 1789, to a newly-created seat. He was confirmed by the United States Senate to that position on September 26, and received his commission that day. Then-Justice Rutledge took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on or around February 15, 1790, and served his entire pre-Chief Justice tenure on the Jay Court. His service as an Associate Justice was terminated on March 5, 1791, due to his resignation. Chief Justice Rutledge received a recess appointment from President Washington on July 1, 1795, to a seat vacated by Chief Justice John Jay, and was subsequently nominated to that office (again by President Washington) on December 10. The U.S. Senate’s rejection of his nomination resulted in his service being cut short, and he left office on December 28.
Due to the U.S. Senate’s refusal to confirm his appointment (which supposedly stemmed from his opposition to the Jay Treaty, an agreement designed to help resolve many U.S.-British disputes left over from the American Revolutionary War, but that was also hotly contested by Jeffersonian factions in many states), Chief Justice Rutledge became the first (and so far only) Member of the SCUS to serve for any period and then fail to win confirmation. The brevity of his tenure (his is the third shortest in SCUS history to date), combined with the relative weakness of that institution in the pre-Marshall Court era, contributed to leaving him with a largely unremarkable judicial legacy.