Hugo Black

Hugo Black was a Supreme Court justice and an ardent New Dealer whose most consequential appearance in the account is as the author of the majority opinion against Harry S. Truman’s seizure of the steel mills. Black’s constitutional reasoning placed the power to settle the limits of presidential authority with the nation’s lawmakers, not the military authorities; afterward, he offered Truman a gesture of hospitality despite their sharp disagreement over the law.

Public Service and Judicial Role

Black was among the officials gathered in the Oval Office on April 23, 1945, for Truman’s meeting about the dispute over Poland with Vyacheslav Molotov. The gathering consisted of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s people, and Black appears in the account as one of the assembled figures, though no contribution by him to that discussion is described.

His better-documented role came in the steel-mill seizure case. On June 2, 1952, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that Truman’s action was unconstitutional. Black delivered the Court’s opinion. The ruling rejected the claim that the president, as commander in chief, possessed ultimate authority to take private property in order to prevent a labor dispute from halting production, and identified that decision as a task for lawmakers rather than military authorities.

The Steel-Mill Ruling and Truman

The decision was a major defeat for Truman, whose action had been challenged in court by the U.S. Steel Corporation. Black’s opinion gave the majority’s constitutional objection its clearest expression: emergency pressure to keep production running did not, by itself, give the president the power to take private property. The ruling also came from a Court whose members had all been appointed by Truman or Roosevelt; Black, described as an ardent New Dealer, was among the liberal justices who nevertheless ruled against Truman.

The immediate consequences extended beyond the courtroom. The steel strike that followed the decision lasted seven weeks, until midsummer, and the account describes unprecedented losses in production and wages. The mills’ owners and workers reached a settlement that provided a wage increase of 21 cents an hour and a steel-price increase of $5.20 a ton.

A Personal Gesture After Disagreement

Black later invited Truman and the justices to a party at his home in Old Town Alexandria. Truman seemed somewhat testy at the start of the evening, according to Justice William O. Douglas, but the disagreement did not prevent an exchange of humor and goodwill. Truman told Black, “Hugo, I don’t much care for your law, but, by golly, this bourbon is good.” The anecdote preserves both the depth of their legal disagreement and Truman’s willingness to respond to Black’s hospitality with warmth.