Will he keep the honor for long?
In a 1970 survey of law school professors and deans conducted by Albert Blaustein and Roy Mersky, McReynolds was voted as one of the 8 worst Supreme Court Justices of all time.
James Clark McReynolds (1862-1946), also known as “The Rudest Man in Washington." If you haven’t heard of him, it is because he is not known for any landmark court decisions, nor are there any colleges named after him, the way Brandeis University is named after another justice from Kentucky. His time on the Court saw women and minorities start to gain more rights, such as the right of women to vote, and McReynolds made his mark by fighting tooth and nail to stop that progress.
McReynolds did not think that women could work in any position of authority, and never got married; you can probably guess why. When it came to hiring law clerks and staff members, he wanted individuals who had no interest in anything but serving him. His policy was to automatically reject applications submitted by “Jews, drinkers, blacks, women, smokers, married or engaged individuals." The only exception was made for an African-American named Harry Parker, whom he hired as his personal messenger.
During the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, McReynolds and three other justices opposed the New Deal so strongly that they came to be known as the “Four Horsemen." Among the innovations they voted to strike down were the National Recovery Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Social Security Act.
The end of McReynolds’ life showed that what goes around comes around. There were no friends or relatives with him in the hospital when he died in 1946, and not one Supreme Court Justice attended the funeral. Compare that with the treatment his messenger, Harry Parker, got when he died of old age in 1953; the Chief Justice and four or five other Justices came to his funeral.
Sources:
5 real judges who put most evil supervillains to shame
Two Kentuckians and Supreme Court Legacies