About Charles Evans Whittaker
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| Charles Evans Whittaker | |
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| In office March 25, 1957 – March 31, 1962 |
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| Nominated by | Dwight Eisenhower |
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| Preceded by | Stanley Forman Reed |
| Succeeded by | Byron White |
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| Born | February 22, 1901 Troy, Kansas |
| Died | November 26, 1973 (aged 72) Kansas City, Missouri |
Charles Evans Whittaker (February 22, 1901–November 26, 1973) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1957 to 1962.
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Early years
Whittaker was born on a farm near Troy, Kansas, and attended school until he dropped out in the ninth grade. He spent the next two years hunting, trapping and farming, but developed an interest in law by reading newspaper articles about criminal trials. He applied to the Kansas City School of Law (currently the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law) and gained admission with the condition that he first acquire a high school education. He spent two years working, and taking high school courses from a private tutor before enrolling. While he was a student at the school, from 1922-1924, Harry S. Truman was a classmate of his. He received his law degree in 1924.
Whittaker joined a law firm in Kansas City, Missouri and built up a practice in corporate law. He had close ties to the Republican party. This led to his first appointment as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri on July 8, 1954. He then was nominated to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals on June 5, 1956.
Supreme Court
He developed a good reputation as a judge and less than a year later he was nominated Associate Justice of the Supreme Court by President Dwight Eisenhower, taking the oath on March 25, 1957. Whittaker thus became the first person to serve as a judge of a United States District Court, a United States Court of Appeals, and then the Supreme Court. (Justice Samuel Blatchford also served at all three levels of the federal judiciary, but the court system was configured slightly differently at that time.)
On the closely divided Supreme Court, Whittaker was a swing vote. Professor Howard Ball explains that Whittaker was an "extremely weak, vacillating" justice who was "courted by the two cliques on the Court because his vote was generally up in the air and typically went to the group that made the last, but not necessarily the best, argument."[1]
Whittaker failed to develop a consistent judicial philosophy, and reportedly felt himself not as qualified as some of the other members of the court. After agonizing deeply for months over his vote in Baker v. Carr, an important reapportionment case, Whittaker suffered a nervous breakdown in the spring of 1962. At the behest of Chief Justice Earl Warren, Whittaker retired from the Court effective March 31, 1962, citing exhaustion from the workload. Thereafter, Whittaker asked Warren to designate him to serve on temporary assignments as a judge of lower federal courts from time to time, but Warren consistently declined.
Final years
Effective September 30, 1965, Whittaker resigned his position as a retired Justice in order to became chief counsel to General Motors. He also became a resolute critic of the Warren Court as well as the Civil Rights Movement, decrying the civil disobedience of the type practiced by Martin Luther King, Jr. and his followers as lawless. Like many conservatives, he criticized the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as unconstitutional[2].
Whittaker died in 1973 at St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City of a ruptured abdominal aneurysm. He was survived by his wife, Winifred, and three sons, Charles Keith, Kent C. and Gary T.
The federal courthouse in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, which houses the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri, is named in memory of Whittaker.
References
- ^ Ball, Howard. Hugo L. Black: Cold Steel Warrior. Oxford University Press. 2006. ISBN 0-19-507814-4. Page 126.
- ^ The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Bibliography
- "Former Justice Whittaker of Supreme Court is dead", The New York Times, November 27, 1973.
- Smith, Craig Alan (2005). Failing Justice: Charles Evans Whittaker On The Supreme Court. McFarland & Company.
External links
- [1]Papers of Richard Lawrence Miller (materials collected while working on a biography of Supreme Court Justice Charles E. Whittaker), Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
| Legal offices | ||
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| Preceded by John Caskie Collet |
Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit 1956-1957 |
Succeeded by Marion Charles Matthes |
| Preceded by Stanley Forman Reed |
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States March 25, 1957 – March 31, 1962 |
Succeeded by Byron White |
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2009,12,05
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