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The "Liberalism" Of Chief Justice Hughes, Samuel Hendel

Vanderbilt Law Review

Charles Evans Hughes ascended the bench as Chief Justice of the United States in February 1930 in the midst of the most serious and steadily worsening economic crisis in American history; a crisis which was to put the institution of judicial review, the Court, and the leadership of its Chief Justice to their severest test. "One may search in vain," said Harlan F. Stone, "for a period in the history of the Supreme Court in which the burden resting on the Chief Justice has been so heavy or when his task has been more beset with difficulties."Now, twenty years after …