William Howard Taft
-I Brief Biography of Life Before the Supreme Court-
In this section you should outline the "life and times" of your chosen subject, placing emphasis on key events in that person's life that may have led them to pursue a career in law. Items you may want to touch upon are the family's legal history (if any), how (if at all) that person's ethnicity, religion, family life or other personal characteristics shaped his/her life. You should also mention key events in that individual's life that may have directed them towards a career as a jurist (e.g. Thurgood Marshall's experiences as a civil rights lawyer.)
William Howard Taft was completely unique as a Chief Justice in that he was the only former president to serve in that position. He was originally from Cincinnati, Ohio and had graduated from law school in 1880. He later served as a prosecuting attorney and a federal judge, although most of his experience after 1901 was in executive position, including Secretary of War in 1903-08 and president in 1909-13. One completely forgotten aspect of his career was that he had been the first Governor General of the Philippines in 1901 during the counterinsurgency war there, which was also the type of experience no other Chief Justice had ever had. Officially, the Philippines War ended in 1902, although counterinsurgency operations continued in Leyte and Samar until 1907 and in Mindanao against the Moros (Muslims) until 1913. Although mostly forgotten in the U.S. today, this was actually America's longest war, more than Vietnam or Afghanistan, but the number of troops stationed there fell from over 40,000 at its height to about 12,000 by 1907 (Silbey, 2007, p. 207). Even in 1911, U.S. military planners expected a general uprising in the Philippines if America ever became involved in a war with Japan or some other imperial power in Asia. Even President Theodore Roosevelt had never "been enthusiastic about the Philippines operation" and doubted that the U.S., would be able to hold these islands in the event of war with Japan (Kinzer, 2007, p. 55). Taft worked hard to end this unpopular war and restore some semblance of civilian rule in the country, during a period when torture, mass execution, concentration camps and other mass atrocities were being committed by American troops. In private, Taft was appalled at what was going on, and thought that his work there was so vital that he refused two appointments to the Supreme Court rather than leave (Mason, 1979, p. 42).
Thanks to the conciliatory policies of William Howard Taft, however, most local elites, including those represented by Emilio Aguinaldo, accommodated themselves to American rule and were "allowed to continue their economic, political and social dominance" (Silbey, p. 208). Unlike other Asians before the 1950s and 1960s, Filipinos were allowed to immigrate to the United States and enlist in the American military. When the Japanese finally invaded in 1941-42, the majority of Filipinos sides with America and fought a guerilla war against the invaders, with was never a common response of colonial subject peoples in the British, French and Dutch Empires. An important reason for this was that they had been allowed self-government modeled on the U.S. system from very early on, and both public and congressional opinion was simply never favorable to having European-style colonies (Silbey, p. 213). Taft was also personally critical of having an overseas empire or colonies, which he thought might become a threat to liberty at home, and this opposition was also noteworthy in the career of his son, Sen. Robert A. Taft.
In 1903-08, Taft was Secretary of War and oversaw the early construction work on the Panama Canal, which was also an unusual background for a future Supreme Court Chief Justice. He also had extensive diplomatic experience, such as his 1905 mission to end the war between Russia and Japan. For a man who hated politics and even claimed that it made him "sick," he certainly kept finding his way into high political office, and in reality his background was even more of the executive type than judicial (Mason, p. 43). Taft ran reluctantly for president in 1908, and won with the support of Theodore Roosevelt, who then turned on him when he concluded that Taft was too conservative and unwilling to continue his Progressive reform policies. Taft disliked being president and after his humiliating defeat by
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