Charles Evans Whittaker

Charles Evans Whittaker ( * February 22, 1901 in Troy, Kansas, † November 26, 1973 in Kansas City, Missouri) was from 1957 to 1962 Deputy Judge (Associate Justice) of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Whittaker came on a farm in Doniphan County, Kansas to the world, he left school as early as the ninth grade. He spent the next two years with hunting, trapping, and agriculture. Newspaper reports of court cases, which he read regularly, aroused his interest in Jurisprudence. He competed at the Kansas City School of Law, now the Law School of the University of Missouri- Kansas City, but was allowed only on the condition for the study, which he would previously complete a high school degree. Before he enlisted, he worked for two years and brought with the support of a tutor the necessary teaching material at. In 1922 he began his studies, Harry S. Truman was one of his fellow students. In 1924, he earned a law degree.

Whittaker joined a law firm in Kansas City (Missouri ) and dealt mainly with corporate law. He had close ties to the Republican Party, resulting in his first appointment as a judge at the Federal District Court for the Western Judicial District of Missouri ( United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri ) revealed on 8 July 1954. On June 5, 1956, he was nominated for the eighth district court of the United States Court of Appeals, a federal court, which the court of appeal for the two federal district courts in the states of Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, and for each one federal judicial district in the states of Minnesota, Nebraska, North and South Dakota forms. Whittaker earned it a reputation as a judge and a little less than a year later he was appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as the successor to Stanley Forman Reed to the office of Associate Judge (Associate Justice) of the Supreme Court of the United States ( Supreme Court of the United States ) is proposed. After confirmation by the U.S. Senate he laid on 25 March 1957 from his oath of office. Thus Whittaker was the first of all three hierarchical levels of the U.S. federal jurisdiction was active in a row, first in a federal district court (United States District Court ), then to a federal appeals court (United States Court of Appeals ), and finally the Supreme Court of the United States. It is true that Judge Samuel Blatchford worked on all three levels of federal courts, in his time but the court system was organized differently.

In the often felled only by a narrow majority decisions of the Supreme Court Whittaker's voice was not set to a certain direction, as Professor Howard Ball executed once. His vote often fell out of favor that of the disputing parties, which is the last but not necessarily vorbrächte the best argument. ( Whittaker what to "extremely weak, vacillating " justice who was " courted by the two Cliques on the Court Because his vote was generated rally up in the air and Typically went to the group did made ​​the last, but not Necessarily the best, argument. " )

Whittaker did not develop consistently consistent legal philosophy. After a few statements he also felt less qualified than other members of the Board of Judges. After he was in the case of Baker against Carr in which it came to the cutting of electoral districts, first several months deeply torn, he suffered a nervous breakdown in the spring of 1962. At the request of the chief judge Earl Warren Whittaker from his post on March 31, 1962 was due to overwork. Then asked Warren Whittaker, some use it as a judge to lower federal courts, what Warren but steadily declined. As his successor, Byron White was appointed to the Supreme Court in the Senate by Earl Warren.

On September 30, 1965, he retired from as a retired judge to act as a consultant for General Motors can. He never tired of criticizing the US-led Warren Senate and the civil rights movement. The civil disobedience of Martin Luther King and his followers he described as illegal. How many conservatives, he opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as unconstitutional.

Whittaker died in 1973 at St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City to an aneurysm in the abdominal cavity. He left behind his wife Winifred and his three sons, Charles Keith, Kent C. and Gary T..

The building of the Federal Court in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, in which the federal court is located for the Western Judicial District of Missouri was named in his honor after him.

Swell

• "Former Justice of Supreme Court Whittaker is dead", The New York Times, November 27, 1973 ( English) ( header -line)