John Rutledge

Rutledge was one of the leading political and legal figures of Revolutionary South Carolina. His career included colonial legislator, revolutionary executive, Continental Congressman, state judge, Constitutional Convention delegate, Associate Justice, and Chief Justice of the United States. Unlike Jay, whose public career continued long after his Supreme Court service, Rutledge's political career largely ended after the Senate rejected his second appointment to the Court.

Rutledge was born in Charleston in September 1739, the eldest son of an Irish-born physician and the brother of Edward Rutledge, who later signed the Declaration of Independence. He studied law in London at the Middle Temple and returned to South Carolina around 1761, where he established himself as a lawyer. His legal training and prominence in Charleston's political community quickly placed him among the colony's leading public figures.

Rutledge entered the South Carolina legislature in 1761 and became deeply involved in resistance to British taxation. He served in the Stamp Act Congress and the Continental Congress and played a major role in South Carolina's revolutionary government. From 1776 to 1778 he served as the state's revolutionary president and later became governor. He returned to the Continental Congress after the Revolution, served on South Carolina's Court of Chancery, and became one of the most important delegates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, where he chaired the Committee of Detail that produced the first comprehensive draft of the Constitution.

Washington nominated Rutledge as one of the original Associate Justices in 1789. He served only slightly more than a year before resigning in 1791 to return to South Carolina's judiciary. In 1795, after Jay resigned, Washington gave Rutledge a recess appointment as Chief Justice. His Court issued only two reported decisions during his brief tenure: United States v. Peters and Talbot v. Jansen. Talbot dealt with maritime jurisdiction and dual citizenship, while Peters involved the federal courts' authority to restrain a lower court acting beyond its jurisdiction.

Rutledge's second Supreme Court career ended abruptly. His outspoken opposition to the Jay Treaty, including public speeches attacking the treaty and President Washington's policy, contributed to the Senate's rejection of his nomination by a 14–10 vote in December 1795. His commission ended on December 28, 1795, and he subsequently withdrew from public life. He died in Charleston on June 21, 1800.

Rutledge's greatest constitutional importance arguably lies outside his brief Supreme Court tenure. His work at the Constitutional Convention, particularly his leadership of the Committee of Detail, placed him directly in the process that produced the constitutional text. His judicial record is too small to support the kind of extensive jurisprudential classification possible for later justices.

Originalist/textualist and structuralist, with strong state-sovereignty and revolutionary-republican commitments. Calling Rutledge a “living constitutionalist” would not fit the evidence. His political opposition to the Jay Treaty should also not be confused with a particular modern judicial philosophy.

Key Supreme Court decisions:

There is no known separate dissenting or concurring opinion by Rutledge in these two reported cases; his tenure as Chief Justice was simply too brief to produce a substantial body of individual opinions.