Wiley Blount Rutledge

Wiley Blount Rutledge
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
In office February 11, 1943 – September 10, 1949
Nominated by	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded by	James F. Byrnes
Succeeded by	Sherman Minton
Personal details
Born	Wiley Blount Rutledge, Jr. (1894-07-20)July 20, 1894 Cloverport, Kentucky
Died	York, Maine
Spouse(s)	Annabel Person
Alma mater	University of Wisconsin–Madison University of Colorado Law School
Religion	Unitarian

Wiley Blount Rutledge, Jr. (July 20, 1894 – September 10, 1949) was an American educator, lawyer, and justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1943–1949).

Early life and education

Rutledge was born in Cloverport, Kentucky (more specifically, at nearby Tar Springs) to Wiley Blount Rutledge, Sr. (d. 1944), a Southern Baptist minister, and Mary Lou Wigginton Rutledge (d. 1903). After a brother died in infancy, Wiley's sister Margaret was born in 1897. His family moved about while he was young.

He attended Maryville College and then the University of Wisconsin–Madison, graduating from there in 1914. Rutledge taught high school in Indiana while attending the present-day Indiana University Maurer School of Law part-time. He later moved to Colorado, and received a degree from the University of Colorado Law School in Boulder. While matriculating at Colorado, Rutledge joined the Pi Chapter of Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity.

Marriage and family

The year he graduated from law school, on August 28, 1917, Rutledge married Annabel Person. The couple had three children: Mary Lou (1922), Jean Ann (1925), and Neal (1927).

Career

Rutledge worked in private practice in Boulder for a few years before deciding to pursue an academic career. He taught law at the University of Colorado (1924–1926) and at Washington University in St. Louis (1926–1935). He was named Dean of the University of Iowa College of Law in 1935. From this position, Rutledge was a vocal supporter of Franklin Roosevelt's plan to pack the Supreme Court. Rutledge also served as Dean of Washington University School of Law from 1930–1935, where the Wiley Rutledge Moot Court competition is named in his honor.

Judicial career

Roosevelt appointed Rutledge to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1939. When Supreme Court justice James F. Byrnes resigned in the fall of 1942 to help supervise wartime mobilization, Roosevelt nominated Rutledge to his position. Rutledge was significantly less conservative than Byrnes and he remained a steady ally of Roosevelt throughout his court career.

Rutledge articulated strong liberal positions, particularly in his interpretation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. He wrote for the court in 1946 in Kotteakos v. United States that "our Government is not one of mere convenience or efficiency. It too has a stake, with every citizen, in his being afforded our historic individual protections, including those surrounding criminal trials. About them we dare not become careless or complacent when that fashion has become rampant over the earth."

Rutledge extended this position to dissent from the Court's decision in Yamashita v. Styer, in which Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita filed for habeas corpus to appeal his conviction for war crimes in World War II. He wrote:

More is at stake than General Yamashita's fate. There could be no possible sympathy for him if he is guilty of the atrocities for which his death is sought. But there can be and should be justice administered according to the law... It is not too early, it is never too early, for the nation steadfastly to follow its great constitutional traditions, none older or more universally protective against unbridled power than due process of law in the trial and punishment of men, that is, of all men, whether citizens, aliens, alien enemies or enemy belligerents.

According to Justice Frankfurter, Rutledge was part of the more liberal "axis" of justices on the Court, along with Justices Murphy, Douglas, and Black; the group would for years oppose Frankfurter's ideology of judicial restraint. Douglas, Murphy, and then Rutledge were the first justices to agree with Black's notion that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Bill of Rights protection into it; this view would later become law.

Rutledge served on the court until his death. On August 27, 1949, Rutledge was vacationing in Maine. He had a stroke while driving his car and died two weeks later, aged fifty-five. His remains are interred at Green Mountain Cemetery in Boulder, Colorado.

One of Rutledge's law clerks, John Paul Stevens, was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1975.

See also

• Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States
• List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States by court composition
• List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States by education
• List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the U.S. by time in office

• List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States
• United States Supreme Court cases during the Stone Court
• United States Supreme Court cases during the Vinson Court

References

• Data drawn in part from the Supreme Court Historical Society and Oyez.
• Justice Rutledge's papers are archived at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress and available to researchers.

External links

• Wiley B. Rutledge at Supreme Court Historical Society.
• Oyez, U.S. Supreme Court media, Wiley Blount Rutledge.

Legal offices
Preceded by New seat	Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit 1939–1943	Succeeded by Bennett Champ Clark
Preceded by James F. Byrnes	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States February 11, 1943 – September 10, 1949	Succeeded by Sherman Minton