Taft Becomes Chief Justice: Only Man to Hold Both Offices

Only one person in American history has led both the executive and judicial branches of the federal government, and he always preferred the bench. William Howard Taft was sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States on July 11, 1921, a decade after leaving the White House, fulfilling what he called the ambition of his lifetime. Taft had confided to friends for years that the presidency was never the job he wanted. Taft's path to the Supreme Court ran through a presidency he never sought with much enthusiasm. Theodore Roosevelt handpicked him as a successor in 1908, and Taft won easily, but his cautious judicial temperament clashed with the progressive activism Roosevelt expected. The two men's bitter falling out split the Republican Party in 1912, handing Woodrow Wilson the presidency. Taft left office humiliated, having won only eight electoral votes. The intervening years treated Taft well. He taught law at Yale, served as president of the American Bar Association, and co-chaired the National War Labor Board during World War I. When Chief Justice Edward Douglass White died in May 1921, President Warren Harding moved quickly. Taft's nomination sailed through the Senate on the same day it was submitted, a courtesy extended to the only former president ever nominated for the court. As Chief Justice for nine years, Taft proved more consequential than he had been as president. He lobbied Congress to pass the Judiciary Act of 1925, which gave the Supreme Court discretionary control over its docket through the certiorari process. He also championed the construction of a dedicated Supreme Court building, though he died in 1930 before its completion. The man who never wanted to be president found his true calling in the third branch.