RARE! “Supreme Court Justice” David J Brewer Hand Written Response Letter

Description: Up for auction a RARE! “Supreme Court Justice” David J. Brewer Hand Written Letter To Physicist Robert Woodward. There are few hand written Letters from Justice Brewer coming to auction as most documents are typed letters. Hand written documents are in the National Archives. ES-4622E David Josiah Brewer (June 20, 1837 – March 28, 1910) was an American attorney and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1889 until 1910. Brewer was born to American missionaries Emilia Field Brewer and Rev. Josiah Brewer, who at the time of his birth were running a school for Greeks in Smyrna, Ottoman Empire; Emilia Brewer's brother Stephen Johnson Field, a future Supreme Court colleague of Brewer, was living with the couple at the time. His parents returned to the United States in 1838 and settled in Connecticut. Brewer attended college at Wesleyan University (1851–1854), where he was a member of the Mystical 7 Society, and he afterward attended Yale College, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1856. While at Yale, Brewer was a classmate of Chauncey Depew and Henry Billings Brown, and was "greatly influenced by the political scientist-protestant minister Theodore Dwight Woolsey." After graduation, Brewer read law for one year in the office of his uncle David Dudley Field, then enrolled at Albany Law School in Albany, New York, graduating in 1858. Upon graduating from law school, Brewer moved to Kansas City, Missouri and after attempting to start a law practice, left for Colorado in search of gold, returning empty-handed in 1859 to nearby Leavenworth, Kansas. He was named Commissioner of the Federal Circuit Court in Leavenworth in 1861. He left that court to become a judge to the Probate and Criminal Courts in Leavenworth in 1862, and then changed courts again to become a judge to the First Judicial District of Kansas in 1865. He left that position in 1869 and became city attorney of Leavenworth. He was then elected to the Kansas Supreme Court in 1870, taking office the following January, where he served for 14 years. Brewer was nominated by President Benjamin Harrison as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court on December 4, 1889, to succeed Stanley Matthews. In addition to Brewer, President Harrison had also considered Henry Billings Brown for the appointment; when associate justice Samuel Freeman Miller died the following year, Brown was nominated for that seat. Brewer was confirmed by the U.S. Senate by a 53–11 vote on December 18, 1889. He was sworn into office on January 6, 1890. He joined a court that included Stephen J. Field, his uncle. Brewer served on the court for 20 years, until his death in 1910, University of Texas professor and Supreme Court historian Lucas Power has noted: "Brewer was one of the most influential justices [on] the court at the time. He was a vigorous defender of minority rights. In one case, he argued for stronger labor protections for women, while in other opinions he argued passionately for the rights of marginalized Chinese and Japanese immigrants." Brewer temporarily took a leave from his Supreme Court duties to serve as president of the U.S. Commission on the Boundary Between Venezuela and British Guiana, established by Congress to arbitrate in the Venezuela Crisis of 1895. In April 1896, due to the unexpected death of his daughter, Brewer left for his Leavenworth home on the day that Plessy v. Ferguson was argued before the Court, and did not participate in that 7-1 decision. However, "[a]s a judge in Reconstruction era Kansas, he had authored one of the first judicial opinions upholding the right of an African-American citizen to vote in a general election, and as the superintendent of schools in Leavenworth, he had helped establish the first schools for blacks in the state." In 1904, he served as president of the Universal Congress of Lawyers and Jurists held in conjunction with that year's Louisiana Purchase Exposition. In 1906, Brewer was one of the 30 founding members of the Simplified Spelling Board, founded by Andrew Carnegie to make English easier to learn and understand through changes in the English language Robert Simpson Woodward (July 21, 1849 – June 29, 1924) was an American civil engineer, physicist and mathematician. He was born at Rochester, Michigan on July 21, 1849, to Lysander Woodward and Peninah A. Simpson. He graduated with a degree in civil engineering at the University of Michigan in 1872. He was appointed assistant engineer on the United States Lake Survey. In 1882 he became assistant astronomer for the United States Transit of Venus Commission. In 1884 he became astronomer to the United States Geological Survey, serving until 1890, when he was hired by Thomas Corwin Mendenhall as assistant in the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. In 1893 he was called to Columbia as professor of mechanics and subsequently became professor of mathematical physics as well. He was dean of the faculty of pure science at Columbia from 1895 to 1905, when he became president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, whose reputation and usefulness as a means of furthering scientific research was widely extended under his direction. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1896. In 1898-1900 he was president of the American Mathematical Society, and in 1900 he became President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1902, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.In 1915 he was appointed to the Naval Consulting Board. He died on June 29, 1924 in Washington, D.C. Professor Woodward carried on researches and published papers in many departments of astronomy, geodesy, and mechanics. In the course of his work with the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey he devised and constructed the "iced bar and long tape base apparatus," which enables a base line to be measured with greater accuracy and with less expense than by methods previously employed. His work on the composition and structure of the earth and the variation of latitude found expression in a number of valuable papers.

Price: 599.99 USD

Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

End Time: 2024-11-07T14:20:26.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 USD