EDWABD DOUGLASS WHITE By Waltbb Cableton Woodwabd IT is almost unthinkable to-day that a man would give up a seat in the United States Senate to become governor of his state. But such action has been known in our early history. Stranger still would it seem, were a member of the Supreme Court of the United States to resign to take a place at the head of his state judiciary. Yet such was the course of John Eut- ledge of South Carolina in the first decade of our national gov- ernment. In a century and a quarter of political develop- ment, however, predominating power and prestige have def- initely shifted from our state to our federal institutions. The great factor in effecting this transformation, in raising aloft the national ideal and at the same time elevating itself to pre- eminent power, is the Federal Supreme Court. In short it has performed the proverbially impossible in lifting itself high by its own boot straps. How high, is indicated in the fact of common understanding that a living ex-president with re- luctance resigned his prospects of a seat on the Federal Su- preme Bench to take the road which led to the White House. Of extreme interest is the study of this judicial body — the most august and powerful judicial tribunal in the world; the study of this, **our most distinctive political institution*' —
- * our continuous constitutional convention. * * Of inseparable
interest likewise is the character of the men who constitute this high court of justice, and particularly that of the man who sits at its head. Many striking circumstances contributed toward making the appointment of Edward Douglass White of Louisiana to the office of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, one of the most notable and significant events in the history of the national tribunal. Indeed, it may be said to have marked the close of one epoch in our national history and the beginning of another ; to have drawn the curtain upon an era of sectionaUsm, provinciaHsm and narrow partisanship;
