William Burnham Woods

Details

Birth

August 3, 1824 · Newark, Ohio

Death

May 14, 1887

Law school

yale university; read law (King, S.D.)

Prior experience

U.s. circuit court judge

Biography

William Burnham Woods (August 3, 1824 – May 14, 1887) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1881 until his death in 1887. Born in Newark, Ohio, Woods graduated from Western Reserve College in 1845 and subsequently studied law, gaining admission to the Ohio bar in 1847. He established a legal practice in Newark and became involved in Democratic politics, serving as mayor of Newark from 1856 to 1857 and in the Ohio General Assembly. During the Civil War, Woods abandoned his Democratic affiliations due to his strong support for the Union cause, serving as a colonel and later brigadier general in the Union Army. Following the war, Woods relocated to Alabama and then to New Orleans, where he practiced law and became a Republican. President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him to the United States Circuit Court for the Fifth Circuit in 1869, where he served for twelve years. As a circuit judge, Woods gained recognition for his expertise in admiralty law and his efforts to protect the civil rights of freed slaves during Reconstruction. In 1880, President Rutherford B. Hayes nominated Woods to the Supreme Court, making him the first justice appointed from a Confederate state since before the Civil War. During his brief tenure on the Supreme Court, Woods authored relatively few opinions due to his short service period. His most significant opinion came in Presser v. Illinois (1886), where he upheld state regulation of private military organizations while affirming that the Second Amendment applied only to federal action. Woods generally supported federal authority and civil rights protections, consistent with his Reconstruction-era judicial philosophy. His legacy remains modest due to his abbreviated service, but he represented an important bridge between the Civil War era and the emerging industrial age of American jurisprudence.

Notable opinions

• United States v. Harris
• Civil Rights Cases