Customer Reviews

William Howard Taft

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is written by a legal scholar who has written on a number of other 20th century American jurists. It only covers Taft's life from the perspective of his chief justiceship. As a result, his life story before 1921 is very sketchy--Mason only relates information about his life-long campaign to be appointed to the Supreme Court and surveys his legal philosophy before 1921. Almost nothing of his service in the Philippines, the War Department, or as President is discussed.

However, Taft's maneuvering before and during his presidency is discussed in detail. There's a lot of interesting disucssion of Taft's impact on federal court procedure, improving the status of the Supreme Court, his impact on constitutional jurisprudence, and his olympian efforts to build a majority for every opinion. Mason goes beyond the usual conservative/liberal or strict/loose constructionist approaches to explain what values motivated Taft's decisions and judicial philosophy.

The writing is a bit dry in places, and I wonder if the scholarship is up to date, the book having been published over 40 years ago. All in all, it's a reasonably good biography of the second half of Taft's life, but with very little on his presidency.