James Moore Wayne

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US Supreme Court justice from 1835 to 1867

For other people named James Wayne, see James Wayne (disambiguation) .

James Moore Wayne (1790 – July 5, 1867) was an American attorney, judge and politician who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1835 to 1867. He previously served as the sixteenth mayor of Savannah, Georgia , from 1817 to 1819 and the member of the United States House of Representatives for Georgia's at-large congressional district from 1829 to 1835, when he was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Andrew Jackson . He was a member of the Democratic Party .

Early life

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Wayne was born in Savannah, Georgia , in 1790. He was the son of Richard Wayne, who came to America in 1760, and married Elizabeth (née Clifford) Wayne on September 14, 1769. James' mother died in 1804 when James was fourteen years old. His sister Mary Wayne, wife of Richard Stites, was the great-grandmother of Juliette Gordon Low , the founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA . She was also the 2nd great-grandmother of governor Endicott Peabody .

After completing preparatory studies, Wayne attended The College of New Jersey (today known as Princeton University ), where he graduated in 1808. After Princeton, he read law to be admitted to the bar in 1810, and began his practice in Savannah.

Career

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From 1812 to 1815, during the War of 1812 , he served in the United States Army as a captain in the Chatham Light Dragoons , now known as the Georgia Hussars .

He served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1815 to 1816. He then served as mayor of Savannah from 1817 to 1819, thereafter returning to private practice in Savannah until 1824.

He then served as a judge, first of the Court of Common Pleas in Savannah, Georgia from 1819 to 1824, and then of the Superior Court of Georgia from 1824 to 1829, until he was elected as a Jacksonian to the United States House of Representatives , serving from March 4, 1829, to January 13, 1835.

He resigned his seat in the House to accept the appointment as an associate justice to the Supreme Court. He was nominated by President Andrew Jackson on January 7, 1835, to a seat vacated by William Johnson , and was confirmed by the United States Senate on January 14, 1835, receiving his commission the same day. He served on the court until his death on July 5, 1867. He favored free trade, opposed internal improvements by Congress (except of rivers and harbors), and opposed the rechartering of the United States Bank .

U.S. Supreme Court

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Wayne in his elder years

While Wayne served his time as an associate justice he heard many cases about slavery, tax, and reform. A Jacksonian, Wayne agreed with President Jackson on the ideals of deepening rivers and harbors, but disagreed on the expansions of highways and canals. Wayne also agreed with Jackson on the Indian Removal Act and believed that the land that used to belong to the Indians would belong to the state. The fact that Wayne refused to accept the Indians as an independent nation and forced them to move west made him appealing to Georgians. Wayne was a Southern Unionist , and against the formation of the Confederate States of America , despite the fact that he was from the state of Georgia. As a Unionist in a southern state, Wayne took a careful approach on the ideals of nullification and consolidation.

While Justice Wayne himself remained loyal to the Union, his son Henry C. Wayne served as a general in the Confederate Army .

Louisville, Cincinnati & Charleston Railroad Co. v. Letson

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In 1844, Justice Wayne heard the case Louisville, Cincinnati & Charleston Railroad Co. v. Letson. This case was about a man named Letson who brought a contract against a railroad company, claiming that the cities did not fulfill the contract with him for the expansion of the road. It centered on the principle that a citizen in a particular state should have the right to sue a corporation, which is based in another state and even conducts its business in another state. Justice Wayne opened his statement regarding the case when he said, "The jurisdiction of the court is denied in this case upon the grounds that two members of the corporation sued are citizens of North Carolina; that the state of South Carolina is also a member, and that two other corporations in South Carolina are members, having in them members who are citizens of the same state with the defendant in error" (43 U.S. 497, 555). Later in his statement, Justice Wayne commented, "A corporation created by a state to perform its functions under the authority of that state and only suable there, though it may have members out of the state, seems to us to be a person, though an artificial one, inhabiting and belonging to that state, and therefore entitled, for the purpose of suing and being sued, to be deemed a citizen of that state" (43 U.S. 497, 555). In these statements, Justice Wayne was explaining how owners stopped being relevant and that businesses now had easy accessibility to federal courts. This case was instrumental as it showed the view of the Supreme Court that corporations could be viewed as 'citizens'

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