Law Commons^™

Pierce Butler: A Supreme Technician, David R. Stras

Vanderbilt Law Review

Despite serving for more than sixteen years on the Supreme Court of the United States and authoring more than 300 opinions, Pierce Butler is one of the lesser-known Justices in American history. When his name is mentioned by constitutional scholars, it is usually to deride him for being one of the so-called "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," a group of Justices that invalidated efforts by politicians, especially President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to enact New Deal reforms. Scholars have characterized his role in the development of constitutional law as "minimal," and he is the subject of only one full-length book, A …