Despite the established custom of having an annual official photograph of the justices of the Supreme Court, none exists for 1924. Chief Justice William Howard Taft cancelled the portrait that year because Justice James C. McReynolds, a blatant and a racist, refused to sit next to Justice Louis D. Brandeis (where he belonged that year based on seniority) because Brandeis was the first Jewish Justice. Although McReynolds and Brandeis were both appointed years earlier by Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, McReynolds refused to speak to Brandeis for three years following his appointment and habitually left the conference room when Brandeis spoke. When Brandeis retired in 1939, McReynolds refused to sign the customary retirement dedicatory letter. When President Herbert C. Hoover was considering appointing Benjamin Cardozo to the Supreme Court, McReynolds urged Hoover not to “afflict the Court with another Jew.” McReynolds would often hold a document in front of his face when Cardozo delivered an opinion from the bench and, reportedly never spoke to Cardozo during their many years together on the beach. McReynolds refused to sign opinions authored by Brandeis or Cardozo. He did not attend the Supreme Court Memorial Ceremonies in honor of Cardozo and refused to attend Felix Frankfurter’s swearing in, stating, “My God, another Jew on the Court.” In 1922, he refused to attend a Court ceremonial function, advising Taft in writing that he did not wish to be with a Jew. A blatant bigot, McReynolds would not accept “Jews, drinkers, blacks, women, smokers, married or engaged individuals” as law clerks. He argued with all the patrons at the Chevy Chase golf club when they couldn’t stand McReynolds anymore. Time magazine “called him ‘Puritanical’, ‘intolerably rude’, ‘savagely sarcastic’, ‘incredibly reactionary’, and ‘anti-Semitic’”. Early on, his temperament affected his performance in the court. For example, he deemed John Clarke, another Wilson appointee to the court, to be “too liberal” and he refused to speak with him. Clarke made an early decision to leave the Court, and McReynolds’s antipathy was a factor given by Clarke. In a letter, Taft commented that “This is a fair sample of McReynolds’s personal character and the difficulty of getting along with him.”
McReynolds was also a misogynist. He would often leave the bench when a woman lawyer rose in court to present her case. He refused to accept “Jews, drinkers, blacks, women, smokers, married or engaged individuals as law clerks.” His judicial opinions opposed President FDR’s New Deal legislation, including the Social Security Act. Taft considered McReynolds to be an “able man,” but found him to be “selfish to the last degree…and fuller of prejudice than any man I have ever known.” McReynolds, who served on the Court from 1914 until 1941, died a lonely death in 1946 without a single friend or relative at his bedside. No member of the Court attended his funeral.
Sources: Wikipedia, “James Clark McReynolds,”: The Full Wiki, “Justice McReynolds, “ AOL The Forgotten Justice, “James Clark McReynolds & The Neglected First, Second & Fourteenth Amendments, “ by Roy Lucas,: Supreme Court Group Photos, Iconic Photos, “Supreme Court Group Photos with 7 comments,”: The American Spectator, “Two Presidents and the Court; When Bigotry Takes the Bench.”
