Taft Week: William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft is the only person to have served as both president and chief justice of the United States. When Theodore Roosevelt declined to run again in 1908, he picked Taft as his successor. Taft lost his bid for reelection in 1912 and after a sting as law professor at Yale, he was named chief justice of the Supreme Court.

An authoritative survey of the Taft Court, which served from 1921 to 1929, and the impact it had on the U.S. legal system, social order, economics, and politics. * An A-Z set of entries on the people, laws, events, and concepts that are important to an understanding of the Taft Court * A photograph of and a brief bibliography on each justice

This study is an account of how Taft and Holmes arrived at the summit of their public vocations. It reveals their common heritage and traces their divergence in jurisprudential matters.

Originally published by Simon & Schuster in 1964, this is the ironic story of how William Howard Taft, the only man ever to be both President and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, reformed judicial processes in this country so thoroughly that he helped to undermine the reactionary power of wealth and privilege in which he believed.

American response to foreign revolution is the theme of this carefully documented diplomatic history of the attitudes and policies of Presidents Taft and Wilson toward revolt in Mexico.

William Howard Taft is the only individual to have served as both the President and the Chief Justice of the United States of America. In the years between the two appointments, Taft taught law at Yale University and gave a series of lectures in which he reflected on the theory and the practices of the presidential office. Taft's lectures have long been out of print, but are now available with a new foreword, introduction and endnotes by constitutional law scholar H. Jefferson Powell.

In Looking East: William Howard Taft and the 1905 U.S. Diplomatic Mission to Asia, authors Margo Stever, James Taft Stever and Hong Shen capture this remarkable story of Taft's mission and highlight Woods' fascinating documentary photographs.

As our 27th president from 1909 to 1913, and then as chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1921 to 1930, William Howard Taft was the only man ever to lead two of America's three governing branches. But between these two well-documented periods in office, there lies an eight-year patch of largely unexplored political wilderness. It was during this time, after all, that Taft somehow managed to rise from his ignominious defeat by both Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election to achieve his lifelong goal of becoming chief justice.

In this biographical study, Jonathan Lurie reassesses William Howard Taft's multiple careers, which culminated in Taft's election to the presidency in 1908 as the chosen successor to Theodore Roosevelt. By 1912, however, the relationship between Taft and Roosevelt had ruptured. Lurie re-examines the Taft-Roosevelt friendship and concludes that it rested on flimsy ground. He also places Taft in a progressive context, taking Taft's own self-description as 'a believer in progressive conservatism' as the starting point. At the end of his biography, Lurie concludes that this label is accurate when applied to Taft.

In this study, Lewis L. Gould presents an assessment of Taft's accomplishments and setbacks in office. Gould's book shows why Taft's presidency is worth remembering on its own terms.

This volume is a collection of ideas stated over a lifetime of service as administrator, diplomat, president, and Chief Justice. It singles out, from the total of Taft's writings and addresses, the essence of his convictions regarding government, diplomacy, and the law.