William Howard Taft Quotes
The President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power in the Federal Constitution or in an act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof. There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest.
Taft, William Howard. Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers. Columbia University Press, 1916, p. 139.
Marshall is famous for, as Chief Justice, establishing the principle that the Judiciary can override Congress and the Executive in determining Constitutionality. However, as this quotation illustrates this principle had been discussed in open debate on the ratification of the Constitution. It was not simply a grab for power by a Chief justice; he uttered this quotation long before he ever suspected he would be a judge but actually spent much of his career in the executive and legislative branch of government.
Barstow the Democratic Governor who had no serious opposition in 1853 found himself challenged for reelection by Coles Bashford of the new Republican Party. The Board of Canvassers reported that Governor Barstow had won reelection but by less than 200 votes in the whole state. The Republicans charged that there had been fraud in some of the rural districts and petitioned the Wisconsin Supreme Court which ruled that nonexistent precincts had indeed voted for the Governor. The Barstow forces however refused to recognize the decisions of the court claiming that the court had no jurisdiction over the Board of Canvassers who were part of the executive branch. The Republicans held their own inauguration and two men claimed to be Governor. But the Governor claimed that the state constitution did not give the court any authority to deal with the crisis, He even called out the State Militia to maintain his office and intimidate the Supreme Court and keep the “other governor” from the state house. Nonetheless the court ruled that even the Governor had to obey the law and the Supreme Court would determine what the law was. Barstow finally “resigned.” See {587915} & {587914}.
The view that the Supreme Court was the final arbiter of constitutional controversies was not held in early America.
If a party controls one of the two houses of Congress, they can block any legislation. But governing involves passing legislation, and in our bi-cameral Congress, control of one house is not sufficient to pass legislation.
William Howard Taft was the 27th president of the United States (1909–1913) and the tenth Chief Justice of the United States (1921–1930), the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected president in 1908, the chosen successor of Theodore Roosevelt, but was defeated for reelection by Woodrow Wilson in 1912 after Roosevelt split the Republican vote by running as a third-party candidate. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Taft to be chief justice, a position he held until a month before his death.
