Edward Terry Sanford, who received both A.B. and Ph.B degrees from the University of Tennessee in 1883, is the only University of Tennessee alumnus to have served as associate justice of the U. S. Supreme Court. Sanford began his legal career in Knoxville in 1890 after receiving a second A.B. degree from Harvard in 1885, as well as M.A. and LL.B. degrees in 1889.
After Sanford worked as a special prosecutor in the federal case against the fertilizer trust, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him Assistant U.S. Attorney General in 1907. The following year, Roosevelt named him to the U. S. District Court for the Middle and Eastern Districts of Tennessee, where he earned a reputation as a fair and impartial judge. With the support of Chief Justice William Howard Taft, Sanford was nominated by President Warren Harding in 1923 to the high court, where he served until his death in 1930.
Sanford authored over one hundred opinions, several of great importance. One of his decisions expanded the interpretation of the First Amendment and made free speech a protected state as well as a federal right. Another case approved the pocket veto practice which allowed the President to veto bills by not returning them to Congress between adjournments as well as at the end of a congressional session.
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