We the People: Hughes returns and preserves the court amidst a great storm

When President Herbert Hoover in 1930 nominated Charles Evans Hughes to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, an unprecedented second tour of duty on the nation’s High Tribunal, he didn’t find it necessary to offer much in the way of justification because, he said, “it was the obvious appointment.” Hughes’s forceful, forbidding Jovian aura commanded attention and respect. Justice Rob...