Charles Evans Hughes

Charles Evans Hughes, Sr. (April 11, 1862 – August 27, 1948) was a lawyer and Republican politician from the New York. He served as the 36th Governor of New York (1907–1910), Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1910–1916), United States Secretary of State (1921–1925) under Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, and the 11th Chief Justice of the United States (1930–1941). He was the Republican candidate in the 1916 U.S. Presidential election, narrowly losing to President Woodrow Wilson. Hughes was an important leader of the progressive movement of the 1900s, a leading diplomat and New York lawyer in the days of Harding and Coolidge, and a leader of opposition to the New Deal in the 1930s.

Charles Evans Hughes in The War That Came Early
On January 20, 1941, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes administered the oath of office to President Franklin D. Roosevelt for an unprecedented third time. This event came just eight days after Japan attacked the United States, which rather dampened the mood.

While listening to the inauguration on the radio, Peggy Druce recalled that Hughes had been Woodrow Wilson's Republican opponent in the 1916 election and that he would have won the election if he had won California. She reflected that the world would be a different place if Hughes had become President but she was uncertain as to how.

Charles Evans Hughes in Joe Steele
The arrest and execution of the so-called "Supreme Court Four", four Supreme Court Justices who opposed President Joe Steele's first Four-Year Plan in 1933-34 cowed Steele's remaining opponents on the Court, including Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. At Steele's second inauguration in 1937, Hughes was noticeably subdued as he administered the oath of office.