The members of the court wear gowns like the ecclesiastical robes of the Church of England. This began in early days when this country took English law and customs for pattern and precedent.
The seats of the judges are placed in the order of the time of their appointment, the senior judges occupying seats on either hand of the Chief Justice, while the latest appointments sit at the farthest end of each row.
This order of precedence extends even into the consulting-room, where the judges meet to talk over difficult cases, the Chief Justice presiding at the head.
Our country is justly proud of its judiciary. The Supreme Court of our country is the last rampart of liberty. Should this court become corrupt our free institutions will surely perish.
The Supreme Court of the United States has, however, made some grave mistakes—witness the famous decision of Justice Taney—but, for the most part, time has only verified their decisions.
The men who have sat here have not only been fair representatives of the legal knowledge of their day but also men of unimpeachable integrity and of the highest patriotism. Many of them have been devout Christians. Some on the bench at present are among the best church workers of Washington.
Courts are conservative bodies. Conservatism produces nothing, but is useful in preserving that which enthusiasm has created.
This Supreme Court room has been made further memorable as being the place in which, in 1877, sat the Electorial Commission which decided the Presidential contest as to whether Hayes, of the Republican party, or Tilden, of the Democratic party, should be the Executive of a great nation for four years.
In the fall of 1876, when the elections were over, it was found that the result was in serious and dangerous dispute. The Senate was Republican, the House Democratic. Each distrusted the other. It was feared that on the following 4th of March the country would be forced to face one of two series dilemmas: either that the country would have no President, or that two would-be Presidents would, with their followers, strive to enter the White House and take violent possession of the government. Men would have shot the way they voted. On the 7th of December, Judge George W. McCrary, a Representative of Iowa, afterward in Hayes's Cabinet, later a circuit judge of the United States, submitted a resolution which became the basis of the Electoral Commission. Three distant Southern States had sent to the Capitol double sets of election returns—one set for Mr. Tilden, one set for Mr. Hayes. On these nineteen votes depended the Presidency for four years.
If they were counted for Tilden, he would have two hundred and three votes and Hayes one hundred and sixty-six; or, if counted for Hayes, he would have one hundred and eighty-five votes and Tilden one hundred and eighty-four. The States whose certificates of election were in dispute were Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon.