Bancroft Davis

Early life

Davis was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, the son of John Davis, a Whig governor of Massachusetts, and was the older brother of congressman Horace Davis. He entered Harvard with the class of 1840 but was suspended in his senior year and did not graduate with his class. He eventually received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University in 1847.

Career

In 1849, Davis became secretary of the American embassy in London and later its chargé d'affaires. He practiced law in New York City and was the correspondent for The Times in London. Because of ill health, he retired from his law work in 1862. He was a member of the New York State Assembly (Orange Co., 1st D.) in 1869, but vacated his seat on March 26 after his appointment as Assistant U.S. Secretary of State.

Assistant Secretary of State

Under President Ulysses S. Grant, he was Assistant Secretary of State in 1869–1871 and again in 1873–1874. Between times he was a secretary of the commission which concluded the Treaty of Washington in 1871, to create a tribunal to settle the Alabama claims. He subsequently represented the United States at the tribunal, the Geneva Court of Arbitration, which met at Geneva on December 15, 1871. The American case was prepared and presented by him.

Minister to Germany

In 1874, he was appointed as the U.S. Minister to Germany, serving in that position until 1877. President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed him to be an associate judge on the United States Court of Claims on December 14, 1877, replacing retiring Judge Edward G. Loring.

For another special assignment at the State Department, he resigned from the Court of Claims in 1881 at the request of President Chester A. Arthur, who reappointed him to the court in 1882. He resigned again in 1883 to become Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, and was replaced on the Court of Claims by Lawrence Weldon.

Role in corporate personhood controversy

Acting as court reporter in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad – 118 U.S. 394 (1886), dealing with taxation of railroad properties, Davis plays a historical role in the corporate personhood debate. The position of court reporter entailed that he write "a summary-of-the-case commentary." Why Bancroft Davis's role in the controversy is worth mentioning is that he noted in the headnote to the court's opinion that the Chief Justice Morrison Waite began oral argument by stating, "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."

In a published account of Bancroft's collected Supreme Court reports and notes from 1885-1886, he wrote of the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case that, "The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Journalists and authors, such as Thom Hartman, have since cited Davis's prior position as president of Newburgh and New York Railway as evidence of a conflict of interest in the corporate personhood interpretation of a Supreme Court ruling dealing with a railroad.

Personal life

On November 19, 1857, he married Frederica Gore King (1829–1916). Frederica was the daughter of James G. King (1791–1853), an American businessman and Whig Party politician and the granddaughter of both Archibald Gracie and Rufus King, who was the Federalist candidate for both Vice President (1804 and 1808) and President of the United States (1816). They did not have any children.

Bancroft Davis died at his residence, No. 1621 H St. N.W., in Washington, DC in 1907, aged 85.

Honors

Elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1851.

Works