Hughes, Charles Evans, 1862-1948

<p><b>Introduction</b><br>
Charles Evans Hughes served as Secretary of State from March 5, 1921, to March 5, 1925, during the administration of President Warren Harding. He continued as Secretary after Harding’s death in office, but resigned at the beginning of President Calvin Coolidge’s full term.</p>

<p><b>Rise to Prominence</b><br>
Hughes was born in Glen Falls, New York in 1862. That same year his family moved to New York City, where he was raised and attended school. He graduated from Brown University at the age of nineteen, with the second highest honors.</p>

<p>Hughes was a prominent public figure long before becoming Secretary of State. He had been a noted anti-corruption attorney in New York before being elected Governor of that state in 1906. He was then appointed to the Supreme Court by President William Howard Taft, a position from which he resigned in the summer of 1916 to run for President against incumbent Woodrow Wilson as the candidate of the Republican Party.</p>

<p>After losing the 1916 presidential election, Hughes re-entered public life as President Warren G. Harding’s choice as Secretary of State. After Harding’s death and Calvin Coolidge’s election, Hughes resigned from the post in favor of Frank B. Kellogg, but continued to lead a productive public life. Among his other projects, he served on the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague from 1928 until 1930. Newly elected President Herbert Hoover reappointed Hughes to the Supreme Court in 1930 as Chief Justice. Hughes served on the Court until 1941. He died in 1948.</p>

<p><b>Influence on American Diplomacy</b><br>
Hughes came to the office of Secretary of State at a moment of transition in U.S. politics. President Wilson’s internationalist ideas, grounded in his wartime Fourteen Points and his advocacy of a new League of Nations designed to prevent future wars, had been discredited in the United States during the peace negotiations at the end of World War I. Although President Wilson had successfully negotiated the Treaty of Versailles, ending the war and establishing the League, the U.S. Senate had refused to ratify the treaty in 1920, and President Wilson had been unwilling to compromise in order to secure its passage.</p>

<p>President Harding was elected in part because of his call for a return to “normalcy,” and as a result Hughes implemented a foreign policy that pursued only the most limited connection to the League or the principles of collective security laid out during the Wilson administration.</p>

<p>Hughes increased U.S. prestige in Latin America by arbitrating disputes between countries in the Western Hemisphere, and during his tenure, the United States recognized the new government in Mexico and compensated Colombia for the 1903 Panamanian revolt, which the United States had supported. He also directed the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-22, which resulted in the Five-Power Treaty, setting the ratio of naval strength among the five largest naval powers.</p>

<p>At the same time, he signed several agreements with the Japanese limiting the deployments of Japanese and U.S. military forces in the Pacific Ocean. He also ended the state of war with Germany with the Treaty of Berlin.</p>

<p>As Secretary of State, Hughes also worked to improve morale and increase the level of talent in the Department of State by supporting the 1924 Foreign Service Act (“Rogers Act,”), which would eventually result in a professional, highly-trained Foreign Service.</p>

<p>Charles Evans Hughes was born and raised in New York. He was educated by his parents but matriculated at Madison College (now Colgate) when he was fourteen. He completed his undergraduate education at Brown. Hughes taught briefly before entering Columbia Law School. He scored an amazing 99 1/2 on his bar exam at the age of 22. He practiced law in New York for 20 years, though he did hold an appointment at Cornell Law School for a few years in that period.</p>

<p>Hughes earned national recognition for his investigation into illegal rate-making and fraud in the insurance industry. With an endorsement from Theodore Roosevelt, Hughes ran successfully for New York governor, defeating Democrat William Randolph Hearst in 1906. In 1910, Hughes accepted nomination to the High Court from President Taft. Six years later, Hughes resigned to run against Woodrow Wilson for the presidency as the nominee of the Republican and Progressive Parties. He lost by a mere 23 electoral votes.</p>

<p>After a brief stint in private practice, Hughes was called to politics again, this time as secretary of state for Warren G. Harding. Hughes continued in this role during the presidency of Calvin Coolidge. Hughes's nomination to be chief justice met with opposition from Democrats who viewed Hughes as too closely aligned with corporate America. Their opposition was insufficient to deny Hughes the center chair, however.</p>

<p>Hughes authored twice as many constitutional opinions as any other member of his Court. His opinions, in the view of one commentator, were concise and admirable, placing Hughes in the pantheon of great justices.</p>

<p>Hughes had remarkable intellectual and social gifts that made him a superb leader and administrator. He had a photographic memory that few, if any, of his colleagues could match. Yet he was generous, kind, and forebearing in an institution where egos generally come in only one size: extra large!</p>

<p>Charles Evans Hughes Sr. (April 11, 1862 – August 27, 1948) was an American statesman, Republican Party politician, and the 11th Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He was also the 36th Governor of New York, the Republican nominee in the 1916 presidential election, and the 44th United States Secretary of State.</p>

<p>Born to a Welsh immigrant preacher and his wife in Glens Falls, New York, Hughes pursued a legal career in New York City. After working in private practice for several years, in 1905 he led successful state investigations into public utilities and the life insurance industry. He won election as the Governor of New York in 1906, and implemented several progressive reforms. In 1910, President William Howard Taft appointed Hughes as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. During his tenure on the Supreme Court, Hughes often joined Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in voting to uphold state and federal regulations.</p>

<p>Hughes served as an Associate Justice until 1916, when he resigned from the bench to accept the Republican presidential nomination. Though Hughes was widely viewed as the favorite in the race against incumbent Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, Wilson won a narrow victory. After Warren G. Harding won the 1920 presidential election, Hughes accepted Harding's invitation to serve as Secretary of State. Serving under Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he negotiated the Washington Naval Treaty, which was designed to prevent a naval arms race among the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Hughes left office in 1925 and returned to private practice, becoming one of the most prominent attorneys in the country.</p>

<p>In 1930, President Herbert Hoover appointed him to succeed Chief Justice Taft. Along with Associate Justice Owen Roberts, Hughes emerged as a key swing vote on the bench, positioned between the liberal Three Musketeers and the conservative Four Horsemen. The Hughes Court struck down several New Deal programs in the early and the mid-1930s, but 1937 marked a turning point for the Supreme Court and the New Deal as Hughes and Roberts joined with the Three Musketeers to uphold the Wagner Act and a state minimum wage law. That same year saw the defeat of the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, which would have expanded the size of the Supreme Court. Hughes served until 1941, when he retired and was succeeded by Associate Justice Harlan F. Stone.</p>