| Bio |

Who they were

William Howard Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on 15 September 1857^[3]. His father, Alphonso Taft, was a Vermont-born Yale graduate who became a judge, giving the family a strong legal tradition before William was even born^[4]. All the Taft boys were expected to follow their brothers to Yale, and William did exactly that^[1][4].

Taft built his early career as a judge, not a natural politician: a contemporary account judged him to have the qualities of ‘a paternal judge and lawgiver’ rather than those of a political leader^[5]. He was persuaded, somewhat reluctantly, to take charge of the American civil government of the Philippines in the early 1900s^[1], work that made his reputation in Washington. Theodore Roosevelt, who valued Taft's judgement highly, drew him into the cabinet and steered him toward the presidency, even contributing a chapter to Taft's 1908 campaign biography^[1].

As president from 1909, Taft pursued a foreign policy known as ‘dollar diplomacy’, in which Secretary of State Philander Knox tried to extend American influence abroad through investment rather than military force^[6][5]. At home, his administration pressed forward with antitrust prosecutions under the Sherman Act, including the landmark case against Standard Oil of New Jersey — a record contemporary defenders pointed to when critics claimed he had done less trust-busting than Roosevelt^{[7, p. 4393][7, p. 497]}. The 1912 election split the Republican Party between Taft and his former mentor Roosevelt, and Taft was left carrying only two states, Utah and Vermont^[8].

In 1921, President Warren Harding appointed Taft Chief Justice of the United States, succeeding Edward White^[8]. Taft took the oath of office that year, moving from the presidency into the judicial role his contemporaries had always thought suited him better^[2][5].

Taft's most lasting institutional legacy came after he left the presidency: as Chief Justice he pushed for reforms to how the Supreme Court itself operated^{[9, p. 5][9, p. 25]}. His 1912 defeat, and the split with Roosevelt that caused it, also fed into the Progressive-era reform arguments that led toward the founding of the Federal Reserve later that decade^{[10, p. 15]}. His son Robert A. Taft went on to become a major figure in the Republican Party in his own right, and another son, Horace Dutton Taft, founded the Taft School^{[11, p. 3]}.

Taft was a genuinely large man, and contemporaries wrote about his size and his ‘weight in public life’ almost as often as his politics^[1]. Off duty, he liked nothing better than a round of golf, playing regularly even as Secretary of War and President^{[4][7, p. 1552]}.

| Legacy & Reputation |

What’s the verdict?