https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancroft_Davis
John Chandler Bancroft Davis (December 22, 1822 – December 27, 1907), commonly known as Bancroft Davis, was an American lawyer, judge, diplomat, and
president of Newburgh and New York Railway Company.[1]
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.[2]
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.[3] He married Frederika Gore King. She was the daughter of James G. King, an American businessman and Whig Party politician and the granddaughter of Rufus King, who was one of the List of signatories of the United States Constitution.
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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.
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."[4] In a published account of Bancroft's collected Supreme Court reports and notes from 1885-1886,[5] 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."[6] 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.
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