John Rutledge

1739–1800 · Supreme Court seat #2 · 1790–1795 · SC

John Rutledge sat on the Supreme Court twice: briefly as an original Associate Justice, and again in 1795 when Washington gave him a recess appointment as Chief Justice. The Senate rejected that second nomination — the only outright Senate rejection of a sitting Supreme Court justice in the Court’s history — largely over Rutledge’s outspoken opposition to the Jay Treaty, and he left the Court for good that December.

Served first as an Associate Justice, 1790–1791, resigning to become Chief Justice of the South Carolina Court of Common Pleas. Washington later gave him a recess appointment as Chief Justice of the United States in 1795, but the Senate rejected the nomination outright — the only such rejection in Supreme Court history — over Rutledge’s public opposition to the Jay Treaty.