Waite

Born:November 29, 1816 in Lyme, Conneticut
Died: March 23, 1888 in Washington D.C.
Education: 1837 Yale College
                 1839 admitted to the bar
Employment: 1839-1850 private practice in Maumee City, Ohio
                      1849-1850 member of the Ohio General Assembly
                      1850-1874 private practice in Toledo, Ohio
                      1863 advisor to the Governor of Ohio
                      1871 United States Representative to the Geneva Arbitration
                      1873 President of the Ohio Constitutional Convention
                      1874-1888 appointed Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court by                                                  President Grant
                      1888 died in office
(Virtualology, 2002)

     Chief Justice Waite was given the reigns of a tarnished Supreme Court, a Court that had gone through the Dred Scott case, the Civil War, and the Reconstruction Era. It was up to Waite to fix the problems of the Court and he was able to complete this, the nobody lawyer from Ohio.(Schwartz, 1993) He would end the Civil War Era of the Court.
      The major cases that Waite heard during his time as Chief Justice was the Civil Rights Cases that occurred during the Reconstruction Era. Most of these cases revolved around the Civil Rights Act of 1875 and the development of the 14th amendment. Only one justice dissented with the majority of the cases that went through the Supreme Court and that was Justice Harlan who happened to be a former slave owner.
   Another set of influential cases were the Granger Cases. The Granger Cases �aroused the attention of the American people to the fact that there was a railroad problem which free competition could not solve.� (Warren, 1926) The railroads were all competing with each other with rates and some of them were even price fixing. It was getting out of hand and it was causing some of the railroad companies to go out of business. The ultimate goal of these railroads was for only one of them to survive and therefore have a monopoly on the railroads.(1926) The railroads were afraid that if the government got involved then the government would just take over the railroad and then the government would control the monopoly. The court said that the railroads were just using it as an excuse and said that in the Constitution there can be no monopolies and that the railroads would be regulated by the government not controlled by the government. (1926)
   Waite was able to gain back the control and power that the Supreme Court use to have. He was able to overcome the challenges put in front of him by his previous Chief Justices. Waite was considered one of the Great Chief Justices.