Henry Billings Brown

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Henry Billings Brown (1899)

Henry Billings Brown (* 2. March 1836 in Lee , Massachusetts , † 4. September 1913 in Bronxville , New York ) was an American lawyer , among other things, several years judges at the Supreme Court of the United States ( US Supreme Court was).

Life

Studies and promotion to federal judge

Brown, whose father Billings Brown was a manufacturer and a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives , studied at Yale University after attending school and graduated in 1856. He then completed his postgraduate studies of law at the law schools of Yale University and Harvard University and received the lawyer's approval in the following state of Michigan .

In 1863, after several years as an attorney, he became Deputy US Attorney of Detroit and held this office until 1864. After serving another attorney for several years, he became a judge for the Wayne County Judicial District in 1878 . Between 1875 and 1890, Brown, who was also a member of the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC and the exclusive Country Club in Chevy Chase, was a judge in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

US Supreme Court judge

After the death of Samuel Freeman Miller on October 13, 1890, he was appointed by US President Benjamin Harrison to succeed him as Assistant Justice at the US Supreme Court and officially took office on January 5, 1891. He held the office of Associate Judge until May 28, 1906 and was then replaced by William H. Moody . After his death he was buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit.

During his tenure on the US Supreme Court, he participated in the following major decisions:

  • In the Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895) had the Supreme Court on the by the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act introduced the Income Tax Act of 1894 ( Income Tax Act of 1894 to decide). The court ruled that the non-income taxes introduced by this law on interest, dividends, and rent are direct taxes and that the law violates the United States Constitution because the state must be levied in proportion to the population.
  • In the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Court had to decide whether an Act of Louisiana , the separate compartments for citizens of white and black color in trains prescribed, would run against the US Constitution. In a judgment written by Brown, it denied this with 7 to 1 judges' votes and thus declared the provision of separate facilities for whites and blacks to be permissible under certain conditions. Through this judgment, the principle of separate but equal was de facto established as the basis of racial segregation in the southern states . John Marshall Harlan held a minor opinion against this fundamental decision . The decision of Plessy v. Ferguson was not recognized until 1954 through the judgment in the Brown v. Board of Education repealed.
  • In the Lochner v. New York (1905) was about the constitutionality of a working time regulation for bakers in the state of New York to sixty weekly working hours. In a close 5 to 4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the New York regulation of working hours would represent an unjustified restriction of the right to freely conclude contracts and would therefore violate the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution . Brown went with the majority opinion formulated by Rufus Wheeler Peckham . Three years later and thus two years after Brown's departure, the court ruled in the Muller v. Oregon (1908) that the provisions contained in the Oregon Labor Hours Act restricting women's working hours would not violate the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution because the restriction was justified by the strong state interest in protecting women's health.

Publications

  • The twentieth century , 1895

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "No capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration in before directed to be taken." Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution
  2. ^ Melville W. Fuller : POLLOCK v. FARMERS 'LOAN & TRUST CO., 158 US 601 (1895). April 8, 1895, accessed December 30, 2007 .
personal data
SURNAME Brown, Henry Billings
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1836
PLACE OF BIRTH Lee , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH September 4, 1913
Place of death Bronxville , New York