William Rufus Day was an American diplomat and jurist. He served for nineteen years as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Prior to his service on the Supreme Court, Mr. Day served as the 36th United States Secretary of State during the administration of William McKinley.
Background
Mr. Day was born in Ravenna, Ohio, United States, on April 17, 1849, the son of Emily Spaulding Day and Luther Day. The reluctance that the future Supreme Court justice exhibited toward entering public life once he reached adulthood cannot be traced to his family background. Though Ravenna was a small town some 30 miles southeast of Cleveland, Ohio, Mr. Day’s family connections were considerably more prestigious than the venue of his birth might have suggested. Both sides of his family boasted prominent judges: his mother’s grandfather had served as chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, and his father and maternal grandfather both served on the Ohio Supreme Court. William Day’s choice of a vocation seems to have been early directed toward the path of the law.
Education
William Day graduated from high school in 1866 and pursued an undergraduate literature major from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor the same year. Upon his graduation in 1870, he returned home to Ravenna, where he studied law for a year in the office of Judge George F. Robinson and then supplemented this study by returning to spend a year in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan Law School.
William Day returned to Ohio but veered away from Ravenna in favor of settling in the nearby town of Canton, where he was admitted to practice law in the summer of 1872. For the next quarter-century he lived the life of a small-town lawyer in Canton. Upon being admitted to practice, Mr. Day immediately formed a partnership with William S. Lynch, who had been practicing law for seven years when he and William Day formed the firm of Lynch and Day.
Before he arrived in Canton and began a law practice with William Lynch, his future partner had suffered political defeat at the hands of another young Canton lawyer named William McKinley Jr. in races for the post of prosecuting attorney for Stark County. Once William Day began practice in Canton and became involved in the town’s Republican politics, he and McKinley gradually formed a fast friendship. Over the following years, as Mr. McKinley, the Civil War hero, clambered up the politic Mr. Tladder - first as a U.S. congressman, then as governor of Ohio, and finally as president ol the United States - William Day acted as a behind-the-scenes adviser to his prominent friend. Mr. Day himself, though, preferred private life. In 1886, with bipartisan support from both Republicans and Democrats, William Day obtained a seat on the Court of Common Pleas; but he served only six months as a judge before resigning, explaining at the time that the small salary attached to the position was not sufficient to meet his family needs. Three years later, in 1889, President Benjamin Harrison nominated William Day to serve as a U.S. federal district judge. Nevertheless, even though the Senate confirmed the appointment, he felt compelled to turn in down for reasons of poor health.
The following decade saw William McKinley win the presidential election of 1896, and he carried William Day into national public life in his wake. In April 1897 the president appointed Mr. Day as first assistant secretary of state. Though this position seemed at first less consequential than Mr. Day’s ability and long friendship with the president might have warranted, it soon proved to be a critical placement. The position of secretary of state had been filled by John Sherman, who had resigned his seat as U.S. senator from Ohio to accept the cabinet appointment. But failing mental faculties besieged Mr. Sherman and made him unable to fulfill the responsibilities of his position, especially during the turbulent events that culminated with the Spanish-American War - known as "the splendid little war," a conflict with Spain over Cuba. In the weeks leading up to this conflict, Assistant Secretary of State Day, whose credentials as a lawyer were impeccable but whose qualifications as a diplomat were far more obscure, became de facto secretary of state. He generally favored a moderate course with Spain, but after the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana’s harbor in February 1898, national sentiment resolutely marched toward war. Finally, when the United States declared war against Spain in April 1898, John Sherman resigned his post and the president appointed William Day to be secretary of state in title as well as fact. He did not remain in this cabinet position for long, though. After six months, Mr. Day resigned to head the United States delegation to the Paris peace conference that met in the fall and early winter of 1898. As the leader of this diplomatic mission, William Day eventually spearheaded the bargaining that acquired Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands for the United States.
When he completed the mission to Paris, Mr. Day attempted to return home to Canton, but President McKinley had other uses for his friend. In February 1899 the president appointed William Day as a judge on the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Here, Judge Day joined William Howard Taft and Howard H. Lurton, both of whom would eventually serve with him on the U.S. Supreme Court as well. But when Mr. Day did advance to a seat on the Court, it was not his presidential friend who placed him there; Mr. McKinley was killed by an assassin’s bullet in the summer of 1901, ending the long friendship. A new president, however, Theodore Roosevelt, soon had occasion to consider William Day for an appointment to the nation’s highest court when Justice George Shiras Jr. resigned in October 1902. Roosevelt turned first to William Howard Taft to fill the vacancy, but he, by this time U.S. civil governor of the Philippines, felt he could not abandon his post there. Thus, the president determined to shore up political support in Ohio by naming William Day to the Court instead. On March 2, 1903, William Rufus Day took his seat as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He would hold this position for almost 20 years.
William Day missed several months of work in 1915, after suffering a severe illness, but otherwise occupied his seat on the Court faithfully until he reached the age of 73. He announced his retirement from the Court on November 13, 1922. President Warren G. Harding tempted the elderly Mr. Day into a position on the Mixed Claims Commission, which was established to resolve claims arising out of World War I, but William Day soon resigned from this post because of ill health.
Mr. Day was an active member of the Republican Party. He held a centrist position on the Supreme Court. In contrast with some conservatives on the Court, William Day tended to favor a wide latitude for state law-making, even when it affected the contractual and property interests of businesses, but, in contrast with liberal justices on the Court, Mr. Day tended to narrowly construe federal power to regulate interstate commerce. The Court under William Day ruled that the law was a "meddlesome interference" with business, concluding that the regulation of work hours was an unjustified infringement on "the right to labor, and with the right of free contract on the part of the individual, either as employer or employee." Mr. Day's made clear that the state had the right to promote public welfare, even if it came into conflict with the concept of liberty of contract.
Views
Quotations:
"Property is more than the mere thing which a person owns. It is elementary that it includes the right to acquire, use, and dispose of it. The Constitution protects these essential attributes of property."
Interests
Sport & Clubs
baseball
Connections
William Day married Mary Elizabeth Schaefer in 1875. This union produced four sons, William, Luther, Stephen, and Rufus, and lasted until Mary’s death in 1911.