William Howard Taft

Jonathan Lurie is a Professor of History Emeritus and Academic Integrity Officer at Rutgers University, where he has been a member of the history department since 1969. His books include The Chicago Board of Trade, Law and the Nation, Arming Military Justice, Pursuing Military Justice, The Slaughterhouse Cases (co-authored with Ronald Labbe), Military Justice in America and The Chase Court. His fields of interest comprise legal history, military justice, constitutional law and history and the eras of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The book on the Slaughterhouse cases received the Scribes award in 2003 as the best book written on law for that year. Lurie served as a Fulbright Lecturer at Uppsala University Law School in Sweden in 2005, was the Visiting Professor of Law at West Point from 1994 to 1995 and has lectured on several occasions at the United States Supreme Court.

“This lucid, fascinating, and beautifully written account invites us to reconsider the place in history of William Howard Taft. Professor Lurie covers Taft’s career up to the point when he achieved his life's goal: the Supreme Court. The book is a superb achievement—a major study of an important and often misunderstood figure in American political and legal history.” —Lawrence M. Friedman, Stanford Law School

• Part I. To the Presidency: 1. The early years; 2. Judge, justice, and justices, 1887–1900; 3. Perambulations and preparation in the Philippines: Roosevelt and Taft; 4. The unwilling heir, 1904–8; Part II. The Presidency: 5. President Taft: tensions, turmoil, travel, and travail, 1909–10; 6. Justices and jockeying, 1910; 7. At the brink of the break, 1911; 8. The split, 1912; 9. Relief, rejuvenation, and renewal, 1913–21; 10. Epilogue.