Justice Mahlon Pitney
Today’s Justice of the Day is: MAHLON PITNEY. Justice Pitney was born on this day, February 5, in 1858.
Justice Pitney was born in Morristown, New Jersey, the state from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He graduated with an A.B. from the College of New Jersey (today called Princeton University) in 1879.
Justice Pitney worked in private practice early in career, first in Dover, New Jersey (from 1882 to 1889) and then in his home town of Morristown (from 1889 to 1894). He took office as a Member of the United States House of Representatives (he was elected as a Republican) the year after he ceased working as a private attorney, remaining there until 1899, one year after he began a three-year term as a State Senator in New Jersey. Justice Pitney joined the Supreme Court of New Jersey in 1901, where he would remain until his appointment to the SCUS; he was Chancellor of that court for the last four years of his tenure there.
Justice Pitney was nominated by President William Howard Taft (with whom he would later serve) on February 19, 1912, to a seat vacated by Justice John Marshall Harlan (I). He was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 13, and received his commission that day. He took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on March 18, and he served on the White and Taft Courts. His service was terminated on December 31, 1922, due to his resignation.
Justice Pitney is not especially well-remembered today and did not have a particularly strong impact on the SCUS’s direction or jurisprudence. Chief Justice Taft, the man who had appointed him to the SCUS, supposedly even once criticized him as a weak Justice some time during the brief overlap of their tenures.