Male

June 14, 1810

March 24, 1886

Utica, NY

Utica, NY

Mary Ann Savage Hunt (1837)
Maria Taylor Hunt (1853)

Ward E. Hunt was a descendent of Thomas Hunt who resided in Stamford, CT in 1650. His parents were Montgomery Hunt, a Cashier at the First National Bank of Utica, and his wife Elizabeth Stringham.

Hunt attended Oxford and Geneva Academies and in 1827 entered Hamilton College. He later transferred to Union and graduated with honors in 1828. He began his legal studies at the Litchfield Law School prior to his return to Utica, New York and entering the law office of Judge Hirman Denio. Hunt was admitted to the bar in 1831, but spent that winter in the south due to his poor health.

Upon his return to New York, he began a partnership with Judge Denio and they soon had a flourishing practice. He then married Mary Ann Savage of Salem, New York and they had two children. His ...second marriage was to Maria Taylor of Albany in 1853.

In 1838, Hunt was elected to the New York State Legislature as a Democrat and served one term. He opposed the annexation of Texas as well as the extension of slavery into the Northern territories. In 1822, Hunt was elected Mayor of Utica. However, as the controversy over slavery became fiercer, Hunt eschewed his earlier political leanings and instead supported the candidacy of Martin Van Buren of the Free Soil Party for President in 1848. Hunt also was instrumental in the organization of the Republican Party in New York in 1856.

In the late 1840s, he ran for the New York Supreme Court but was defeated, supposedly by the Irish vote because he had successfully defended a policeman charged with the murder of an Irishman. At the end of the Civil War, Hunt was elected to succeed his former partner Judge Denio on the New York Court of Appeals. Three years later in 1868, he became the Chief Justice of that same court. In the autumn of 1872, he was nominated by President Grant to the U.S. Supreme Court on the resignation of Justice Samuel Nelson. He took his seat on the court on January 9, 1873.

As a member of the Supreme Court, Hunt consistently sided with the Court majority (led by Chief Justice Morrison Waite) and upheld state regulations, bondholder claims, and police power. He also denied claims for racial equality under the fourteenth amendment. His earlier fight against slavery had been to prevent its extension into the Northern territories where white "free-soil" farmers hoped to establish themselves without competition from large plantations worked by slave labor. His concern had not been for the welfare of the slaves or the abolition of slavery, but rather for the rights of white small farmers.

Some of the first cases that Hunt sat on were the famous Slaughter-House Cases. These were a set of three similar cases whose decisions were combined to become a crucial interpretation of the newly passed, and extremely contentious Fourteenth Amendment. This Amendment re-defined citizenship in the United States to include more African Americans (former slaves) and children of immigrants (legal or not). The Slaughter-House Cases were the first many important cases based on this Amendment, including Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and Roe v. Wade (1973). The ruling in the Slaughter-House Cases was essentially that the federal government would protect the privileges of national citizenship of a person but it could not police the individual state's powers.

Hunt also sat at the trial of Susan B. Anthony in 1873, who had voted in New York during the 1872 presidential election despite the state constitutional requirement limiting the franchise to men. Anthony claimed that the state had denied her the privileges guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment. However, Hunt flatly denied her argument and invoked the Slaughter-House Cases (1873), which established the precedent that state regulations, however unjust, were under the absolute domain of the state. Anthony received a guilty verdict, Hunt refused to poll the jury, and fined Anthony $100. The sentence was not enforced, however, and there was no appeal.

After he suffered a paralyzing stroke in 1879, Hunt received much criticism for his refusal to retire from the bench, despite his inability to perform his judicial duties. His refusal was based on his desire for a full pension, which was only awarded after ten years of service and the minimum age of seventy years. On January 27, 1882, Congress passed a special act which allowed him to retire and still receive his pension. The passage of the act was conditional on his retirement within thirty days of its passage. He resigned on the day of its enactment.

Hunt died on March 24, 1886 in Washington, D.C.
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1830

Attended the Oxford Academy, Geneva Academy, and entered Hamilton College in 1827. He later studied at Union College in 1828.

Lawyer; Political Office

NY in 1831

Democrat; Free-Soil; Republican

Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court 1872-1882

State Representative (NY) 1838
Judge of the State Court of Appeals (NY) 1865
Chief Justice of the State Court of Appeals (NY) 1868

Mayor (Utica, NY) 1844

Catalogue of the Litchfield Law School (Hartford, CT: Press of Case, Tiffany and Company, 1848), 23.

NY Times 25 March 1886; NY Tribune 25 March 1886; Wyman, Thomas Bellows. Genealogy of the Name and Family of Hunt. J. Wilson and Son, 1863.; Fitch, Charles Elliott. Encyclopedia of Biography of New York. The American Historical Society, Inc., 1916.; Daly, Charles Patrick, et al. History of the Bench and Bar of New York. New York History Company, 1897.