Path to the Supreme Court
William Strong, a Connecticut-born Yale man, built his practice in Reading, Pennsylvania — learning Pennsylvania Dutch to serve his clients — served in Congress as an antislavery Democrat, and sat eleven years on Pennsylvania's Supreme Court. Grant nominated him on February 7, 1870, the very day Hepburn v. Griswold came down striking the greenback laws — and the paired appointments of Strong and Bradley (§41) have carried the 'court-packing' label ever since.
On the Supreme Court
Strong delivered what the administration hoped for: fifteen months later his opinion in Knox v. Lee overruled Hepburn and saved the paper money the Union had fought the war on. His enduring work came at the decade's end — Strauder v. West Virginia and Ex parte Virginia held that excluding Black citizens from juries denies equal protection, among the Reconstruction amendments' few nineteenth-century victories. A devout Presbyterian, he presided over the National Reform Association — the body seeking to write Christianity into the Constitution's preamble — into his first years on the bench, and sat on the 1877 Electoral Commission. Then he did the rarest thing: retired in December 1880 in full vigor, deliberately, to set an example for failing colleagues. Swayne (§35) went within weeks; Clifford (§34) and Hunt (§42) clung on.
The Voting Record
How Strong voted in the 2,272 cases the Supreme Court Database records from the 1868 term through the 1880 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.
Across the whole career Strong voted with Swayne more than with anyone else — the same side of the judgment in 73.1% of their 316 divided cases — and with Clifford least, at 52.8%. See this Court →Compared against the 5 colleagues Strong shared at least 300 divided cases with.
Source · The Supreme Court Database (Spaeth, Epstein, Nelson, Martin, et al.) · how these figures are made
Key Decisions
Knox v. Lee (Legal Tender Cases)
1871Holding · The Legal Tender Acts were constitutional; greenbacks could discharge prior and subsequent debts.
Role · Strong wrote the 5–4 majority overruling Hepburn v. Griswold.
The reversal that saved the Union's paper currency — delivered by the two justices appointed the day Hepburn came down.
Read the opinion →Strauder v. West Virginia
1880Holding · A statute excluding Black citizens from jury service violates the Equal Protection Clause.
Role · Strong wrote for the Court, as in the companion Ex parte Virginia.
The strongest equal-protection holdings of the nineteenth century — a floor that survived even the Jim Crow Court, in principle if rarely in practice.
Read the opinion →Go Deeper
William Strong has no biography of his own — but he is worth the reference works and one great institutional history, because two of his opinions still matter and the way he left the bench is nearly unique. Start with the Strong chapter in Friedman and Israel's The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, the fullest connected account of the life; then read the two opinions that made him — the Legal Tender Cases (1871), where he reversed Chase's Court and rescued the greenback, and Strauder v. West Virginia (1880), where he struck down the exclusion of Black men from juries — set in Charles Fairman's history of the Reconstruction Court.
The Bookshelf
For a justice with no book of his own, the fullest connected account of the life lives in the standard multi-justice set. The Strong chapter carries the whole arc: the Yale-educated Reading lawyer, the two terms in Congress, the eleven years on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that made his reputation, Grant's 1870 appointment to Grier's seat, and the decade in which he wrote two opinions of lasting weight before retiring — deliberately — while still sharp. Chelsea House.
The most controversial reversal in the Court's nineteenth century, and Strong's signature opinion. Fifteen months after Chase's Court struck down the greenback in Hepburn v. Griswold (§39), a bench enlarged by Grant's two new justices — Strong and Bradley — reversed it, upholding Congress's power to make paper money legal tender. Strong wrote for the new 5–4 majority. Because Grant named the pair the very day Hepburn came down, the case has anchored the oldest court-packing debate in American history — coincidence or design (Fairman's verdict: not a corrupt bargain). Free online.
The other Strong, and the one too often forgotten. In 1880 he wrote for the Court that a state law barring Black men from juries violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of the equal protection of the laws — one of the first and clearest civil-rights victories built on the Reconstruction amendments, in a decade the Court otherwise spent narrowing them (see Slaughter-House, §36). That the justice remembered for a money case also wrote Strauder is the argument for taking him seriously. Free online.
The standing institutional frame for this shelf, and the fullest treatment Strong's Court will ever get. Fairman is the authority on the Legal Tender drama — he devotes enormous care to whether Grant packed the Court, and concludes that he did not — and he sets Strong's whole decade in its docket. For a justice without a biography, this is where the Court he served is most completely written. Macmillan.
Strong's own published lectures on church and state — the key primary source for the justice who, while sitting on the Court, presided over the movement to write Christianity into the Constitution. The place to meet the most theologically committed justice of the nineteenth century directly. Dodd & Mead.
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 fullest connected life
- 2.The Legal Tender Cases — for the packing payoff that reversed Chase, in his own words
- 3.Strauder v. West Virginia — for the civil-rights landmark that outlasted the greenback fight
- 4.Fairman — for the Reconstruction Court and the packing verdict
Where the Papers Are Kept
Strong left few personal papers; scattered correspondence survives in Pennsylvania repositories such as the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and in the records of the National Reform Association — the movement he led in retirement to write Christian principles into the Constitution. As with most Reconstruction associate justices, the reference works and Fairman stand in for a biography. Visit →
Online Resources
Ideas for Further Research
- The court-packing payoff. Grant named Strong (with Bradley §41) on February 7, 1870 — the very day Chase's Court struck down the greenback in Hepburn v. Griswold. Fifteen months later Strong wrote the majority in the Legal Tender Cases that reversed it. Whether the packing was coincidence or design is the oldest such debate in the Court's history (Fairman's careful verdict: not corrupt). The direct sequel to Chase §39; Field §38 dissented, Miller §36 concurred. Seat lineage: he took Grier's chair (§31).
- The other Strong — Strauder v. West Virginia (1880). The justice remembered for a money case also wrote one of the first great Fourteenth Amendment civil-rights opinions: a state may not exclude Black men from juries. A reminder that the Reconstruction Court's record on race was not only Slaughter-House (§36) and retreat — and an argument for rescuing Strong from the footnotes.
- The justice who left on time. Strong retired in 1880 at seventy-two, in good health, reportedly to set an example for colleagues who would not go — the pointed opposite of Field §38 (who clung on), Clifford §34, and the Grier §31 whose very seat Strong had taken after Grier was pushed out. The rare well-timed voluntary exit in the mortal-court endgames thread; in retirement he led the National Reform Association's campaign to write God into the Constitution.