Path to the Supreme Court
On the Supreme Court
Hunt's tenure produced one infamous afternoon and one honorable dissent. Riding circuit at Canandaigua in June 1873, he presided over the trial of Susan B. Anthony for unlawful voting: he read a pre-written opinion, directed the jury to convict without deliberating, and refused to poll them — then, asking whether the prisoner had anything to say, absorbed the most famous rebuke ever delivered to a federal judge: 'you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government.' He fined her $100 and pointedly declined to jail her for nonpayment, foreclosing appellate review; she never paid. Three years later, in United States v. Reese, Hunt alone dissented on the merits as the Court gutted the Enforcement Act's protection of Black voters. A stroke paralyzed him in January 1879; ineligible for a pension, he refused to resign for three years until Congress passed a special act in 1882 to buy the seat free.
The Voting Record
How Hunt voted in the 1,629 cases the Supreme Court Database records from the 1871 term through the 1881 term, using that database’s classification of each vote as liberal or conservative. The gold tick on each bar is the rate for the other justices sitting on those same cases.
Where Hunt sat among the colleagues on the same bench — and whether that Court divided clearly enough for the question to have an answer — is laid out Court by Court. See this Court →
Source · The Supreme Court Database (Spaeth, Epstein, Nelson, Martin, et al.) · how these figures are made
Key Decisions
United States v. Susan B. Anthony (on circuit)
1873Holding · Anthony was guilty of unlawful voting; Hunt directed the jury's verdict and refused to poll it.
Role · Hunt presided as circuit justice, fined her $100, and declined to imprison her — blocking any appeal.
The most notorious trial of the suffrage era: Anthony's courtroom speech became a founding text of the movement, and Hunt its foil.
Read the opinion →United States v. Reese
1876Holding · The Enforcement Act's voting-protection sections exceeded the Fifteenth Amendment's warrant.
Role · Hunt was the lone dissenter on the constitutional merits.
As the Court began dismantling Reconstruction's voting protections, the machine politician from Utica was the one justice who objected.
Read the opinion →Go Deeper
Ward Hunt has no biography, wrote little of note in nine years — three of them spent incapacitated by a stroke — and yet left two marks history has not forgotten: he presided over the trial of Susan B. Anthony, and his refusal to leave the disabled bench forced a change in the law. Start with the Hunt chapter in Friedman and Israel's The Justices of the United States Supreme Court for the connected life; then read the two things that make him worth a page — Ann Gordon's account of the Anthony trial (free from the Federal Judicial Center) and David Atkinson's chapter on his endgame in Leaving the Bench.
The Bookshelf
For a justice with no book of his own, the fullest connected account of the life. The chapter carries the arc: the Utica lawyer and New York Court of Appeals chief judge, tied to Roscoe Conkling's Republican machine, whom Grant put on the Court in 1873 in Samuel Nelson's seat (§29) — and whose brief, thin tenure was cut short by illness. An honest first orientation to a minor justice with two outsized footnotes. Chelsea House.
Hunt's one appearance on history's stage — on the wrong side of it — told authoritatively and free. Months after joining the Court, riding circuit in Canandaigua in 1873, Hunt presided over United States v. Susan B. Anthony, charged with voting while a woman. He read an opinion written before he had heard the defense, directed the jury to return a verdict of guilty without letting it deliberate, and fined her $100 she never paid. Gordon's short book, from the Federal Judicial Center's Federal Trials series, is the best modern account. Free online.
The book that gives this whole shelf its 'mortal court' thread, and Hunt is one of its starkest cases. A paralytic stroke in 1878 left him unable to work, but he would not resign — he lacked the ten years' service the 1869 law required for a full pension. He held the seat, non-functional, for over three years, until Congress passed a special act in 1882 granting him full pay if he left within thirty days, and he finally did. Read beside Grier (§31), Clifford (§34), and Field (§38). University Press of Kansas.
The standing institutional frame for this shelf, and where Hunt's slender docket is set in its setting — the Waite Court's workaday business, and the awkward years of a justice too ill to sit but unwilling to go. For a bookless justice, this is the fullest account of the Court he served. Macmillan.
The standard modern biographical encyclopedia of the Court: a signed essay on each of the 110 justices from Jay to Alito, alphabetically arranged, by a named scholar or journalist. Length tracks reputation — two pages for Thomas Johnson, three for Woods, eleven for Holmes — which is itself a rough map of who the literature has bothered with. It is not a substitute for a biography, and for the justices who have never had one it is often the most careful short account in print. Borrow it free at the Internet Archive.
The one-volume reference on the Court: more than a thousand signed entries on cases, doctrines, institutions and the justices, current to 2005. Cases and people share one alphabet, so a citation can be followed without changing volumes, and the biographical entries are short, written by specialists, and better than a longer sketch at carrying the historiography — what the argument about a justice currently is. Borrow it free at the Internet Archive.
The Reading Path
A researched route through the literature — in order.
- 1.The Friedman & Israel chapter — for the connected life
- 2.Gordon — for the Anthony trial — his one moment on history's stage
- 3.Atkinson — for the disability endgame and the 1882 pension act
- 4.Fairman — for the Reconstruction Court he barely served
Where the Papers Are Kept
Hunt left little in the way of personal papers; scattered correspondence survives in New York collections and in the papers of Roscoe Conkling, the senator whose machine sponsored him. As with most of the forgotten Reconstruction justices, the reference works and Fairman stand in for the missing life. Visit →
Online Resources
Ideas for Further Research
- The Conkling man who tried Susan B. Anthony. A Utica lawyer and New York Court of Appeals chief judge, tied to Roscoe Conkling's Republican machine, Hunt reached the Court in 1873 in Nelson's seat (§29). Months later, riding circuit, he presided over United States v. Susan B. Anthony — and, reading an opinion written before the defense had spoken, directed the jury to convict her of voting and fined her $100 she never paid. His one appearance on history's stage, on the wrong side of it.
- The disability endgame — the case that changed the pension. A paralytic stroke in 1878 left Hunt unable to work, but he would not resign: he lacked the ten years' service the 1869 law required for a full pension. He held the seat, non-functional, for over three years, until Congress passed a special act in 1882 granting him full retirement pay if he left within thirty days. The starkest case in the mortal-court endgames thread (Grier §31, Clifford §34, Field §38), and a spur to later pension reform.
- The thin record and the bookless justice. Hunt wrote few opinions of consequence in nine years, three of them incapacitated; he has no biography, and the reference works and Fairman carry him. A reminder that the Court has always had its makeweights — and that even a forgettable justice can leave one unforgettable mark. Seat lineage: Nelson §29 → Hunt → Blatchford.