Behrens on the Absent Justice Matthews

Jennifer L. Behrens, J. Michael Goodson Law Library, Duke Law, has posted The Empty Chair: Reflections on an Absent Justice, which has been published as Green Bag Almanac & Reader 131-142 (2020):

Stanley Matthews (LC)

This article examines a January 1888 letter to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Morrison Waite from Associate Justice Stanley Matthews. Justice Matthews requested time away from the notoriously overworked Court’s session in order to attend the funeral of Dr. Peter Parker, renowned medical missionary and diplomat. The piece presents biographical sketches of Justice Matthews and Dr. Parker, and considers the historical context of the potential absence on the late nineteenth-century Court’s operations. 

 --Dan Ernst