Justice William R. Day
Today’s Justice of the Day is: WILLIAM R. DAY. Justice Day was nominated by President Theodore Roosevelt on this day, February 19, in 1903.
Justice Day was born on April 7, 1849, in Ravenna, Ohio, the state from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. Thanks to his family background, he was seemingly destined to be a judge: his maternal great-grandfather was Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, his maternal grandfather was a Member of the Ohio Supreme Court, and his father was Chief Justice of Ohio’s highest court. Justice Day graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.S. in 1870.
In 1872 Justice Day began a quarter of a century-long career in private practice in Canton, Ohio (he would also work as private attorney there in 1899); during that time he was offered a recess appointment to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio (in 1889), but declined to accept it. He became a Judge of the Ohio Court of Common Pleas’ Ninth Judicial District in 1886, before leaving that office the following year. Justice Day began a year-long stint as Ohio’s Assistant Secretary of State in 1897, and then served as Secretary of State in 1898. He left that office later that same year to begin work as Chairman of the United States’ Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference with Spain (following the conclusion of the Spanish-American War); the conference ended the very next year. Justice Day was successfully appointed to be a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in 1899, where he would remain until his elevation to the SCUS. After leaving the bench, he went on to be an Umpire of the Mixed Claims Commission to Adjudicate War Claims against Germany (formed in the wake of the First World War) from 1922 to 1923.
Justice Day was nominated to a seat vacated by Justice George Shiras, Jr., and was confirmed by the United States Senate on February 23, 1903. He received his commission that day, and took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on March 2. Justice Day served on the Fuller, White, and Taft Courts, and his service was terminated on November 13, 1922, due to his retirement.
Despite his considerable judicial pedigree, Justice Day is not particularly well-remembered today. Perhaps the most important decision he made while at the SCUS was when he joined the dissent from the opinion of the Court in Lochner v. New York (1905), which severely restricted the ability of government to improve working conditions for the vast majority of the country on the grounds that any regulations which interferes with the supposed “right to contract” are unconstitutional. While Justice Day did not live to see it happen, the views he and his fellow dissenters articulated would more or less become controlling doctrine after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s appointees dismantled the highly conservative, business-friendly precedents of the late-19th and early-20th centuries.