Justice Stanley Matthews
Today’s Justice of the Day is: STANLEY MATTHEWS. Justice Matthews was born on this day, July 21, in 1824.
Justice Matthews was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the state where he was raised, spent almost all of his professional life and from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He received his university education at Kenyon College, located in his home state, where he studied alongside a future President of the United States, Rutherford B. Hayes, and earned a B.A. in 1840.
Justice Matthews entered private practice in Columbia, Tennessee in 1842 and worked there until 1844, when he returned to his home town of Cincinnati to work as a private attorney for seven years. He was also Clerk of the Ohio General Assembly during this part of his private legal career, serving from 1848 to 1851. Justice Matthews briefly left private practice when he was a Judge of the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas (again in his home state) from 1851 until 1853, when he returned to private practice in Cincinnati for five years. He also served as United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio during and briefly after this time, holding that office from 1851 to 1861. Justice Matthews left that position to join the Twenty Third Ohio Infantry as a Lieutenant Colonel, 1861-1862, and then became a Colonel of the Fifty First Ohio Volunteers, 1862-1863. After leaving the war effort, he became a Judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati, serving from 1863 until 1865, when he returned to private practice. In 1876, concurrent with the last phase of his career as a private attorney, Justice Matthews acted as counsel for then-Governor Hayes of Ohio before the congressional electoral commission that had been put together to resolve the hotly disputed Presidential election of 1876. He left private practice in 1877 to begin service as a United States Senator from his home state, where he would remain until the year of his appointment to the SCUS.
Justice Matthews was first nominated by President Hayes in January of 1881, but the United States Senate took no action on the nomination, possibly due to accusations of cronyism stemming from the fact that the two had been classmates at Kenyon College and because of Justice Matthews’ role in helping the President secure his office following the dispute over the 1876 election. He was subsequently nominated by President James Garfield (who had come into office upon the death of President Hayes) on March 14, 1881, to a seat vacated by Justice Noah Haynes Swayne. Justice Matthews was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on May 12, and received his commission that day. He took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on May 17, and served on the Waite and Fuller Courts. His service was terminated on March 22, 1889, due to his death.
Justice Matthews may not be especially well known today, but he had undeniable influence over how the late-19th century SCUS understood the 14th Amendment. Some of his rulings are still occasionally cited to this day, such as his majority opinion in Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886) (which held that the 14th Amendment forbids unequal enforcement, even if a law is impartial on its face) and Hurtado v. California (1884) (which declared that state criminal proceedings that are based on information, rather than a grand jury indictment, are not a violation of the Due Process Clause). Sadly, he joined the odious opinion of the Court in The Civil Rights Cases (1883), one of the most important 14th Amendment decisions in SCUS history (though it has thankfully since been overturned) and perhaps the most high profile case of his time.