Stanley Matthews (lawyer)

Matthews was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and studied at Kenyon College.

He practiced law in Cincinnati before moving to Maury County, Tennessee, where he practiced from 1840 to 1845. After editing the Cincinnati Herald for two years from 1846 to 1848, Matthews was selected to serve as the clerk of the Ohio House of Representatives and as a county judge in Hamilton County. He was then elected to the Ohio State Senate for the 1st district, where he served from 1856 to 1858. He was then appointed as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, serving from 1858 to 1861.

In 1861, Matthews resigned as United States Attorney to serve as a lieutenant colonel with the 23rd Ohio Infantry regiment of the Union Army during the American Civil War. His superior officer was Rutherford B. Hayes; William McKinley also served in the regiment. With the 23rd Ohio Regiment, Matthews fought at the battle of Carnifex Ferry. On October 26, 1861 he was appointed colonel of the 51st Ohio Infantry Regiment. and on April 11, 1862 he was nominated as brigadier general of U.S. Volunteers. However, the nomination was tabled and never confirmed. Nevertheless, Colonel Matthews commanded a brigade in the Army of the Ohio and later the Army of the Cumberland. Colonel Matthews resigned from the Union Army on April 11, 1863.

Matthews ran for the United States House of Representatives in 1876, but was defeated. A year later, he won a special election to the Senate to fill a vacancy created by the resignation of John Sherman. He did not seek reelection.

On January 26, 1881, President Rutherford B. Hayes nominated Matthews for a position as an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Matthews was a controversial nominee, and as the nomination came near the end of Hayes's term, the Senate did not act on it. Upon succeeding Hayes, incoming President James A. Garfield renominated Matthews in March 1881, and the Senate confirmed him by a vote of 24 to 23, the narrowest confirmation for a successful U.S. Supreme Court nominee in history. He served on the Court until his death in 1889.

His funeral was attended by many people. His remains are interred at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio Also interred there is John McLean, another Associate Justice.  

A collection of Justice Matthews's correspondence and other papers are located at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center library in Fremont, Ohio and open for research. Additional papers and collections are at: Cincinnati Historical Society, Cincinnati, Ohio; Library of Congress, Manuscript and Prints & Photographs Divisions, Washington, D.C.; Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio; .Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City, New York; State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Archives Division, Madison, Wisconsin; and Mississippi State Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Mississippi.

Among these was Yick Wo v. Hopkins. In 1880, the elected officials of city of San Francisco, California thought they had a clever way to deal with the Chinese in the city. They passed an ordinance that persons could not operate a laundry in a wooden building without a permit from the Board of Supervisors. The ordinance conferred upon the Board of Supervisors the discretion to grant or withhold the permits. At the time, about 95% of the city's 320 laundries were operated in wooden buildings. Approximately two-thirds of those laundries were owned by Chinese persons. Although most of the city's wooden building laundry owners applied for a permit, none were granted to any Chinese owner, while virtually all non-Chinese applicants were granted a permit. Yick Wo (益和, Pinyin: Yì Hé, Americanization: Lee Yick), who had lived in California and had operated a laundry in the same wooden building for many years and held a valid license to operate his laundry issued by the Board of Fire-Wardens, continued to operate his laundry and was convicted and fined $10.00 for violating the ordinance. He sued for a writ of habeas corpus after he was imprisoned in default for having refused to pay the fine.

The Court, in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Matthews, found that the administration of the statute in question was discriminatory and that there was therefore no need to even consider whether the ordinance itself was lawful. Even though the Chinese laundry owners were usually not American citizens, the court ruled they were still entitled to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Matthews also noted that the court had previously ruled that it was acceptable to hold administrators of the law liable when they abused their authority. He denounced the law as a blatant attempt to exclude Chinese from the laundry trade in San Francisco, and the court struck down the law, ordering dismissal of all charges against other laundry owners who had been jailed.

Matthews' son, Paul Matthews, was Episcopal bishop of New Jersey. His grandson was T. S. Matthews, editor of Time magazine.