ABSTRACT
The only man to serve as the nation's president and as chief justice of the US Supreme Court, William Howard Taft had remarkably varied experience in public service. Taft proved an ineffective and unhappy campaigner and much preferred the Court to the White House. Taft is primarily remembered as the leading advocate of judicial reform in the early years of the twentieth century and as a conservative president. Taft's presidency was a progressive- conservative one; the split with Theodore Roosevelt led to a split in the Republican Party. The result was the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson in 1912. One of Taft's judicial appointments was Chief Justice Edward E. White. Court observers often claimed that Taft appointed him calculating that White's advanced age would give Taft a chance to be appointed chief justice. Taft proved to be an activist chief justice. He recommended judicial appointments to the president and lobbied Congress for judicial reforms.
