Edward Terry Sanford

Edward Terry Sanford (July 23, 1865 – March 8, 1930) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1923 until his death in 1930. Prior to his nomination to the high court, Sanford served as a United States Assistant Attorney General under President Theodore Roosevelt from 1905 to 1907, and as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee and the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee from 1908 to 1923. As of July 2026, he is the last sitting district court judge to be elevated directly to the Supreme Court.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Sanford practiced law in his hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, during the 1890s and the first decade of the 20th century.

Sanford is typically viewed as a conservative justice, favoring strict adherence to antitrust laws, and often voted with his mentor, Chief Justice William Howard Taft.

Sanford received a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Bachelor of Philosophy degree from the University of Tennessee in 1883, a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University in 1885, a Master of Arts degree from the same institution in 1889, and a Bachelor of Laws from Harvard Law School in 1889. He was in private practice in Knoxville from 1890 to 1907, and was a lecturer at the University of Tennessee School of Law from 1898 to 1907.

One of Sanford's earliest appearances before the Supreme Court came as an attorney representing the appellant Knoxville Iron Company, in Knoxville Iron Company v. Harbison (1901). The Court ruled in favor of Harbison and upheld states' right to ban companies from paying employees in scrip rather than cash.

Assistant Attorney General Sanford first served in the government as a special assistant to the Attorney General of the United States from 1905 to 1907, and then as Assistant Attorney General in 1907 under President Theodore Roosevelt.

United States v. Shipp As an Assistant Attorney General, he was the lead prosecutor in the high-profile trial in United States v. Shipp (1907). This case involved a sheriff, Joseph Shipp, who was convicted of allowing a condemned black prisoner, who was the subject of a United States Supreme Court writ of habeas corpus, to be lynched. Sanford's conduct of the trial, particularly his exemplary closing argument, are said to be part of a "Great American Trial." It is the only criminal trial conducted before the United States Supreme Court in which the court exercised original jurisdiction (the court typically only hears criminal cases on appeal). It was widely followed in the newspapers. Shipp and several others were later convicted.

District court service

Sanford was nominated by President Theodore Roosevelt on May 14, 1908, to a joint seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee and the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee vacated by Judge Charles Dickens Clark. Sanford took the judicial oath of office on February 19, 1923. He was Circuit Justice for the Fifth Circuit throughout his tenure on the Court. While upholding a state law banning anarchist literature, the opinion in Gitlow implied that some provisions of the Bill of Rights (here the First Amendment's free speech provisions) apply with equal force to the states via the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (commonly called "incorporation"). That had "extraordinary consequences for the nationalization of the Bill of Rights during the era of the Warren Court," which later used similar reasoning to incorporate other amendments and expand civil liberties. Gitlow has been cited as precedent in cases such as Near v. Minnesota (1931), which incorporated the guarantee of freedom of the press, Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which recognized the constitutional right to privacy, and more recently, McDonald v. Chicago (2010), which incorporated the right to bear arms.

Sanford authored the majority opinion in Okanogan Indians v. United States, commonly called the "Pocket Veto Case," which upheld the power of the President's "pocket veto." Other noteworthy opinions by him are Corrigan v. Buckley, 271 U.S. 323 (1926), which upheld the right of property sellers to discriminate based on race, Taylor v. Voss, 271 U.S. 176 (1926) and Fiske v. Kansas, 274 U.S. 380 (1927).

Chief Justice Taft is considered by some to have been Justice Sanford's mentor. just a few hours before Chief Justice William Howard Taft, who had retired five weeks earlier. As it was customary for members of the Court to attend the funeral of deceased members, that posed a "logistical nightmare" because of the immediate travel from Knoxville for Sanford's funeral to Washington for Taft's funeral. As had been the case in their careers, Taft's death overshadowed Sanford's demise. Sanford was an active member of Civitan International. And he may have been the inspiration for Ernest Lawrence Thayer's poetical tragic hero in Casey at the Bat. He is one of six Tennesseans who have served on the Supreme Court.