David Josiah Brewer

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David Josiah Brewer (* 20th January 1837 in Smyrna , Ottoman Empire ; † 28. March 1910 in Washington, DC ) was an American lawyer , who more than twenty years judge on the US Supreme Court ( US Supreme Court was).

David Josiah Brewer

Life

Attorney, prosecutor and judge

Brewer's father was a missionary in the Ottoman Empire and his mother was a sister of Stephen Johnson Field , who was also a Supreme Court Justice. After attending school, he studied first at Wesleyan University and then at Yale University until graduation in 1856. A subsequent postgraduate study of law at Albany Law School , he finished in 1858.

Brewer, who was also involved in the American Bible Society , then worked as a lawyer in Kansas City after being admitted to the bar before becoming a judge in wills and criminal proceedings in Leavenworth in 1862 . In 1865 he was appointed judge of the First Judicial District of Kansas and then from 1869 to 1870 as the District Attorney of Leavenworth. After serving as a judge at the Kansas Supreme Court from 1870 to 1884 , he was appointed judge on the US Court of Appeals for the eighth judicial district in 1884 to succeed George W. McCrary .

US Supreme Court judge

After the death of Stanley Matthews on March 22, 1889, he was appointed associate judge of the United States Supreme Court on December 18, 1889 by US President Benjamin Harrison and officially took office on January 6, 1890.

He held the office of Associate Justice until his death on March 28, 1910 and was then replaced by Charles Evans Hughes , who was Chief Justice of the United States between 1930 and 1941 . After his death he was buried in Mount Muncie Cemetery in Lansing .

Major decisions

During his judicial activity in 1896 he worked on the decision in the Plessy v. Ferguson , which allows state segregation as long as facilities for blacks and whites are comparable. This decision was only made sixty years later by the decision in the Brown v. Board of Education repealed May 17, 1954.

Other known proceedings while serving on the US Supreme Court included:

  • In the Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States (1892) the US Supreme Court between the Church of the Holy Trinity and an English Anglican priest decided whether a contract concluded between them would violate a law of 1885 that forbade the recruitment of foreign nationals. The Supreme Court came to the ruling by Brewer that the previously decisive US District Court for the southern borough of New York was wrong, which found the employment contract to be against the law. The Supreme Court particularly emphasized the role of the priest, whom it did not see as a foreign worker. The decision shaped the name of the USA as the "Christian Nation".
  • In the Giles v. Harris (1903) confirmed the US Supreme Court an Act of the Alabama for the registration and qualification of voters and refused therefore, African Americans a right to vote granted in Alabama that this has been systematically denied by the committee of only white US citizen Parliament Alabama. Although the complainant Jackson W. Giles saw it as a racial discrimination against colored people, the Supreme Court did not consider this electoral law to be unconstitutional, since it ultimately contained regulations on the registration and qualification of all eligible voters. Brewer, along with Henry Billings Brown and John Marshall Harlan, had dissenting opinions on this judgment, but lost three to six judges' votes.
  • In the Muller v. Oregon (1908) had the Supreme Court to rule on an Oregon Working Hours Act and the provisions contained therein regarding the working hours of women. The court ruled that the provisions of the Oregon Working Hours Act to restrict women's working hours did not violate the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution , because the restriction was justified by the strong state interest in protecting women's health , confirming the judgment of the Supreme Court of Oregon .

Fonts

  • The Pew for the Pulpit , 1897
  • The World's Best Orations, from the earliest period to the present time , 1899
  • Yale's Relation to Public Service , 1901
  • American Citizenship , 1902
  • The United States a Christian Nation , 1905
  • Two Periods in the History of the Supreme Court , 1906
  • The Mission of the United States in the Cause of Peace , 1909

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Brewer, David Josiah
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1837
PLACE OF BIRTH Smyrna , Ottoman Empire
DATE OF DEATH March 28, 1910
Place of death Washington, DC