Robert A. Taft: “Equal Justice under Law”

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

By the time Taft delivered this speech at Kenyon College, in Ohio, in October 1946, a new consensus had emerged among the American people about the role of government. Prior to 1932, most Americans had advocated limited government, belief in which was forged during the American Revolution and premised on the idea that as government power expanded, the liberty of the individual declined. But to combat the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt rapidly expanded the role of the national government, arguing that in the modern industrial state individuals were necessarily interdependent on one another. By the late 1930s Americans increasingly looked to Washington for jobs, old-age pensions, minimum wages, guarantees for collective bargaining, insurance for their bank accounts, crop subsidies, and a range of additional functions that formerly had been the responsibility of the individual. Similarly, prior to World War II, Americans had been confident that the nation's geographic isolation protected it from all foes and had therefore generally followed George Washington's advice to avoid becoming entangled in foreign alliances. But the weapons of modern war in the hands of the Fascist powers in the 1930s steadily undermined the nation's isolationist tradition; following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans came to understand that in the modern era their national security was deeply entwined with international events.

In this speech, Taft challenges the emerging consensus, arguing that in combating both the Great Depression and Fascism, the United States had undermined the most important principle of the English-speaking peoples' heritage, equal justice under law as a guarantee of individual liberty. The New Deal's creation of numerous government agencies to deal with the economic crisis, he argues, had been the nation's first giant step away from equal justice under law: “Programs for general economic regulation are always inconsistent with justice because the detailed control of millions of individuals can only be carried through by giving arbitrary discretion to administrative boards.” World War II expanded still further the grants of arbitrary power to government. Taft acknowledges that the wartime expansion of power was necessary, for if the state failed there could be no individual liberty. Still, he argues vehemently against the Truman administration's claim that the continuation of these powers into the postwar era would be necessary in order to secure the peace. Taft declares, “Unless we desire to weaken for all time the ideals of justice and equality, it is absolutely essential that our program of reconversion and of progress abandon the philosophy of war.”

Taft also criticizes actions of American foreign policy at the war's end that he believes similarly threatened the English-speaking peoples' heritage of individual freedom. Although he supported the United Nations in principle, he notes here that because its Security Council had complete power to take whatever action it deemed necessary for international peace, the peacekeeping body as constituted put more emphasis on security than on liberty and justice. He similarly chides the nation for abandoning the ideals of the Atlantic Charter, which proclaimed in August 1941 that the nation would fight Fascism to establish the right of self-determination for people throughout the world. Yet, he notes, in agreements made at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the United States had accepted the territorial division of the spoils of war. He laments, “Nothing could be further from a rule of law than the making of secret agreements distributing the territory of the earth in accordance with power and expediency.” Finally, Taft also finds the recently concluded Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders to be in violation of the United States' Anglo-Saxon heritage. Because the Nazi leaders were convicted and sentenced to death on the basis of an ex post facto law, Taft maintains that the trials were more concerned with vengeance than justice: “The hanging of the eleven men convicted at Nuremberg will be a blot on the American record which we shall long regret.”

This 1946 speech demonstrates all the qualities that made Taft one of the most respected politicians of his day yet one who was not sufficiently popular to ever win the Republican presidential nomination. He first articulates forcefully his conviction that because the United States was founded on the ancient Anglo-Saxon heritage of the rule of law and equal justice under law, these principles are essential for individual liberty. He then argues that both the New Deal and the execution of World War II departed from these principles, thereby undermining America's commitment to individual liberty. By grounding his criticism in these traditional beliefs, Taft provided an intellectual rationale for Republican conservatives to contest the Democrats' advocacy of the positive state and demonstrated even to his opponents that he was a man of sincere conviction, not political expediency. Yet his deep devotion to these bedrock principles often made him appear to be rigid and inflexible. In an era when a majority of Americans had been persuaded that the expansion of the federal government's power had rescued them from economic catastrophe and Fascism, Taft's unrelenting efforts to limit the growth of both the welfare state and the national security state suggested to many that he was wedded too deeply to an outdated political philosophy.