CHIEF JUSTICE RETIRES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 888, 4 February 1930, Page 9

CHIEF JUSTICE RETIRES

W. H. TAFT RESIGNS UNITED STATES POSITION NOTABLE SCHOLASTIC CAREER Reed. 9.5 a.m. WASHINGTON, Mon. Chief Justice W. H. Taft, of the United States, resigned on Monday. The condition of his health is be-

lieved to be responsible for his retirement. President Hoover has nominated Mr. Charles Evans Hughes to succeed Chief Justice Taft. Mr. William Howard Taft, who lias been Chief Justice of the United States since 1921, was at one time President of tho United States. Mr. Taft was born in Cincinnati in 1857. llis father was Alfonso Taft, Secretary of War and Attorney-General in President Grant’s Cabinet. When he was 29 years of age he married the daughter of the Tlon. John W. Herron, district attorney and State Senator of Cincinnati. He went through the public schools at Cincinnati and later graduated at Yale University, subsequently taking his B.L. degree at the Law School, Cincinnati College. In 1880 Mr. Taft was admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court, Ohio. He was law reporter of the Cincinnati “Times” and later the “Commercial.” A year later he became assistant prosecuting attorney. He rose vapidly, and from ISS7 to 1890 he was a Judge of the Superior Court. The So-licitor-Generalship of the United States was held from IS9O-92, and after that he was a Circuit Judge and a Member of the Circuit Court of Appeal. He was the first Civil Governor of the Philippine Islands, upon which he testified before the Senate Committee in 1901. In the following year he visited Rome to confer with Pope Leo XIII. concerning the purchase of lands in the Philippines. Mr. Taft has since then held many responsible positions in the United States. Pie was the nominee of the Republican Party for the Presidency in 1908, and in the following year reached the Presidency, holding the office till 1913. He was the possessor of a host of university degrees, and is the author of many notable publications upon judiciary and educational subjects. The new Chief Justice, Mr. Charles Evans Hughes, is a noted jurist, and is a Judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague. He is a member of a law firm in Xew York City. He was born in 1862. Governor of Xew York for two terms, Mr. Plughes has also been Secretary of State for the United States, and is now president of the Xew York State Bar Association. He has for long been prominently associated with international affairs, one of his most outstanding offices being the chairmanship of the Washington Disarmament Conference in 1921, when he caused a sensation by announcing America’s views on world disarmament. He headed the U.S.A. delegation to the Sixth PanAmerican Conference at Havana in 1928. He is president of the American Society of International Law. Several publications of political moment have been penned by the new Chief Justice.