Henry Billings Brown

Henry Billings Brown ( born March 2, 1836 in Lee, Massachusetts, † September 4, 1913 in Bronxville, New York) was an American lawyer who spent several years Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States (U.S. Supreme Court ).

Life

Study and rise to a federal judgeship

Brown, whose father was Billings Brown producer and member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts, studied post-school, first at Yale University and graduated in 1856 from. He then completed a postgraduate course in law at the law schools of Yale University and Harvard University and received after the admission of lawyers in the state of Michigan.

In 1863, he was after several years of working as a lawyer for Deputy U.S. Attorney of Detroit and held that post until 1864. After he again worked as a lawyer for several years, he became in 1878 judge for the District of Wayne County. Between 1875 and 1890, Brown, who is also a member of the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC and the exclusive Country Club in Chevy Chase, was a judge at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

Judge of the U.S. Supreme Court

After the death of Samuel Freeman Miller on October 13, 1890, he was appointed by U.S. President Benjamin Harrison as his successor as Assistant Judge at the United States Supreme Court and officially took office on January 5, 1891. The Office of the Associate Judge he held until May 28, 1906, was subsequently replaced by William H. Moody. After his death, he was buried at the Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit.

During his affiliation with the U.S. Supreme Court, he worked on the following major decisions:

• In the method of Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895 ) the Supreme Court had to decide on the scheme established by the Wilson - Gorman Tariff Act Income Tax Act 1894 ( Income Tax Act of 1894). The court ruled that introduced by that law not income taxes on interest, dividends and rents are direct taxes and that the law against the Constitution of the United States would run, as their survey must be carried out in the states in proportion to population.
• Plessy v. Ferguson in the process (1896 ), the court had to decide whether a law of the State of Louisiana, the separate compartments for citizens white and black skin color prescribed in railway trains, contrary to the U.S. Constitution. It decided that this was written by a Brown verdict with 7 to 1 judges vote and declared the provision of separate facilities for whites and blacks, under certain conditions permitted. That judgment was de facto the principle of separate but equal, ie "Separate but equal " established as the basis of racial segregation in the South. John Marshall Harlan took a minority opinion against this decision of principle. Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1954 was overruled by the judgment in the case of Brown v. Board of Education again.
• In the process of Lochner v. New York ( 1905) dealt with the constitutionality of a regulation of working time for bakers in the state of New York to sixty hours a week. In less than 5 to 4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the New York regulation of working hours would constitute an unjustified restriction of the freedom to contract and thus would violate the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Brown joined the majority opinion, which was formulated by Rufus Wheeler Peckham. Three years later, two years after Brown leaving the court ruled in the process of Muller v. Oregon ( 1908) that the provisions contained in the Working Hours Act Oregon on the restriction not contrary to the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution of hours worked by women would be contrary because the limitation of the strong state interest in protecting women's health is warranted.

Publications

• The twentieth century, 1895