[13] Responding to newspaper stories run by the New York World, Governor Frank W. Higgins appointed a legislative committee to investigate the state's public utilities in 1905.

[14] Though few expected the committee to have any impact on public corruption, Hughes was able to show that Consolidated Gas had engaged in a pattern of tax evasion and fraudulent bookkeeping.

To eliminate or mitigate those abuses, Hughes drafted and convinced the state legislature to pass bills that established a commission to regulate public utilities and lowered gas prices.

[17] Following the investigation, Hughes convinced the state legislature to bar insurance companies from owning corporate stock, underwriting securities, or engaging in other banking practices.

The decision established that the federal government could regulate intrastate commerce when it affected interstate commerce, though Hughes avoided directly overruling the 1895 case of United States v. E. C. Knight Co.[35] He also wrote a series of opinions that upheld civil liberties; in one such case, McCabe v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Co., Hughes's majority opinion required railroad carriers to give African-Americans "equal treatment.

[39] With the split in the Republican Party, Democratic Governor Woodrow Wilson defeated Taft and Roosevelt in the 1912 presidential election and enacted his progressive New Freedom agenda.

Hughes accepted the nomination, becoming the first and only sitting Supreme Court Justice to serve as a major party's presidential nominee, and submitted his resignation to President Wilson.

Nevertheless, Woodrow Wilson, as expected, swept the Solid South while also winning several states in the Midwest and Great Plains, where his candidacy was boosted by a strong antiwar sentiment.

[45] In March 1917, Hughes joined with many other Republican leaders in demanding that Wilson declare war on the Central Powers after Germany sank several American merchant ships.

Hughes was struck by personal tragedy when his daughter, Helen, died in 1920 of tuberculosis, and he refused to allow his name to be considered for the presidential nomination at the 1920 Republican National Convention.

[55] Another view is that Harding favored joining with reservations when he assumed office on March 4, 1921, but senators staunchly opposed (the "Irreconcilables"), per Ronald E. Powaski's 1991 book, "threatened to wreck the new administration.

After Senator William Borah led passage of a resolution calling on the Harding administration to negotiate an arms reduction treaty with Japan and Britain, Hughes convinced those countries as well as Italy and France to attend a naval conference in Washington.

The Washington Naval Conference opened in November 1921, attended by five national delegations, and in the gallery by hundreds of reporters and dignitaries such as Chief Justice Taft and William Jennings Bryan.

[63] Hughes favored a closer relationship with the United Kingdom, and sought to coordinate US foreign policy with Great Britain concerning matters in Europe and Asia.

He also served as a special master in a case concerning Chicago's sewage system, was elected president of the American Bar Association, and co-founded the National Conference on Christians and Jews.

Though many had expected Hoover to elevate his close friend, Associate Justice Harlan Stone, Hughes was the top choice of Taft and Attorney General William D.

[71] The nomination faced resistance from progressive Republicans such as senators George W. Norris and William E. Borah, who were concerned that Hughes would be overly friendly to big business after working as a corporate lawyer.

[80] Shortly after Hughes was confirmed, Hoover nominated federal judge John J. Parker to succeed deceased Associate Justice Edward Terry Sanford.

[a][84] The primary difference between these two blocs was that the Four Horsemen embraced the substantive due process doctrine, but the liberals, including Louis Brandeis, advocated for judicial restraint, or deference to legislative bodies.

Hughes also wrote the majority opinion in Stromberg v. California, which represented the first time the Supreme Court struck down a state law on the basis of the incorporation of the Bill of Rights.

In the 1934 case of Home Building & Loan Ass'n v. Blaisdell, Hughes and Roberts joined the Three Musketeers in upholding a Minnesota law that established a moratorium on mortgage payments.

[93] The court held that Congress had, in passing an act that provided a mandatory retirement and pension system for railroad industry workers, violated due process and exceeded the regulatory powers granted to it by the Commerce Clause.

Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, Hughes held that Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 was doubly unconstitutional, falling afoul of both the Commerce Clause and the nondelegation doctrine.

[98] In December 1936, the court handed down its near-unanimous opinion in United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., upholding a law that granted the president the power to place an arms embargo on Bolivia and Paraguay.

[105] While the debate over the court-packing plan continued, the Supreme Court upheld, in a 5–4 vote, the state of Washington's minimum wage law in the case of West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish.

[107] In his majority opinion, Hughes wrote that the "Constitution does not speak of freedom of contract", and further held that the Washington legislature "was entitled to adopt measures to reduce the evils of the 'sweating system,' the exploiting of workers at wages so low as to be insufficient to meet the bare cost of living.

Meanwhile, conservative Associate Justice Willis Van Devanter announced his retirement, undercutting Roosevelt's arguments for the necessity of the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937.

[115] By the end of the year, the court-packing plan had died in the Senate, and Roosevelt had been dealt a serious political wound that emboldened the conservative coalition of Southern Democrats and Republicans.

[116] However, throughout 1937, Hughes had presided over a massive shift in jurisprudence that marked the end of the Lochner era, a period during which the Supreme Court had frequently struck down state and federal economic regulations.

[124] He joined and helped arrange unanimous support for Black's majority opinion in Chambers v. Florida, which overturned the conviction of a defendant who had been coerced into confessing a crime.