Born in New York, Charles Evans Hughes graduated from Brown University in 1881 and received a law degree from Columbia University in 1884. As a lawyer, he helped the government expose corruption in the power and life insurance industries. Hughes became governor of New York in 1906. Reelected in 1908, he resigned in 1910 to join the U.S. Supreme Court as President William Howard Taft’s appointee. In 1916 Hughes ran for president, but narrowly lost to Woodrow Wilson. He returned to the political arena as secretary of state to presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge from 1921 to 1926. In 1930 President Herbert Hoover appointed Hughes chief justice of the Supreme Court. He ruled on the constitutionality of much of the New Deal legislation supported by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Hughes retired from the court in 1941.
