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William H. Taft (September 15, 1857 – March 8, 1930) was an American politician, the 27th President of the United States, and the 10th Chief Justice of the United States. He remains the only person in history to have led both the Executive and Judicial branches of the United States government since the passage of the Constitution, and is also the last President to hold a public office after his term ended. A lifelong Republican, Taft served as Solicitor General of the United States, federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Governor-General of the Philippines, and Secretary of War before being nominated for president in the 1908 Republican National Convention with the backing of his predecessor and close friend Theodore Roosevelt. During his life, Taft also worked as a professor of law, once at the University of Cincinnati and once at Yale Law School, and wrote for several newspapers. He was also a noted advocate of world peace.

Taft defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the presidential election. Among other things, his administration is characterized for trust-busting, strengthening the Interstate Commerce Commission, expanding the civil service, and establishing a better postal system. Two constitutional amendments were passed during his term: the 16th Amendment, authorizing a federal income tax, and the 17th Amendment, mandating the direct popular election of senators instead of by the state legislatures . Taft was the first president to occupy the Oval Office when it was opened in October 1909.

Taft later broke off contact with Roosevelt in one of the most well-publicized political feuds of the 20th century. In the 1912 election, Taft lost his bid for a second term; Roosevelt ran on his newly formed Progressive Party ("Bull Moose") ticket, splitting the Republican vote and resulting in the election of Woodrow Wilson. Taft later became Chief Justice, notably becoming the only President to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.

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Taft was born on September 15, 1857, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His mother was Mount Holyoke graduate Louisa Torrey; his father was Alphonso Taft, a prominent Republican, who served as Secretary of War under President Ulysses S. Grant. He was brought up in the Unitarian church, and would remain a faithful Unitarian his entire life. At age 18, he met his future wife Helen Herron at a sledding party in Cincinnati; she and Taft courted while he was away at college.

Like his father, the younger Taft attended college at Yale University. There, he was a member of Skull and Bones, the secret society co-founded by his father back in 1832, as well as the Beta chapter of the Psi Upsilon fraternal organization. His college friends knew him by the nickname "Old Bill." Initially, given Taft's physical size, Yale's football coach wanted him to join the college squad, but Taft's father refused to give him permission, citing both concern for his son's safety and his personal opinion that football was "not a gentleman's sport". Instead, however, Taft rowed on the Yale crew team and was an accomplished wrestler. In 1878, Taft graduated from Yale ranked second in his class out of 121. After college, he attended Cincinnati Law School, graduating with his LL.B in 1880. While in law school, he worked on the local newspaper

After joining the Ohio bar shortly after his law school graduation, he was appointed Assistant Prosecutor of Hamilton County, Ohio, and two years later in 1882 was appointed local Collector of Internal Revenue. Taft married his longtime sweetheart, Helen Herron, in Cincinnati in 1886. In 1887 he resigned that position, and was appointed to be a judge of the Ohio Superior Court. His star rose quickly, and in 1890 President Benjamin Harrison appointed him Solicitor General of the United States. Bolstered by his acute legal knowledge, in 1892 President Harrison appointed him as an associate judge for the newly created United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, a post which he held until 1900. He eventually became the chief judge of the Sixth Circuit, and as chief judge, he wrote one of his most famous opinions in (1898). It was then that he met Theodore Roosevelt for the first time, who was at the time a civil service commissioner. In 1893, while still on the Sixth Circuit, Taft completed the legal dissertation on which he had been gradually working since becoming Solicitor General, thereby earning an LL.D. from Yale Law School. Due to his LL.D., between 1896 and 1900, Taft was - in addition to his judgeship - Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati.

In 1900, President William McKinley (a fellow Ohioan) appointed Taft as the chairman of a commission to organize a civilian government in the Philippines, which had been ceded to the United States by Spain following the Spanish-American War and the 1898 Treaty of Paris. Although Taft had initially been opposed to the annexation of the islands, and told McKinley that his real ambition was to become a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, he reluctantly accepted the appointment when McKinley suggested that he would be "the better judge for this experience." From 1901 to 1903, Taft served as the first civilian Governor-General of the Philippines, a position in which he was very popular both among Americans and Filipinos. For example, in 1902 Taft visited Rome to negotiate with Pope Leo XIII for the purchase of church lands in the Philippines, inducing Congress to appropriate $7,239,000 to purchase the lands, which Taft then sold to Filipinos on easy terms. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt (who by then had become President) offered Taft the seat on the Supreme Court to which he had for so long aspired, but he reluctantly declined when native Filipino groups begged him to remain in Manila as Governor-General.

In 1902, however, Roosevelt appointed Taft as Secretary of War, and he returned to the United States. As Secretary of War during relative peacetime, Taft was a well-travelled spokesman for Roosevelt's administration. In 1906, Roosevelt sent troops to restore order in Cuba during the revolt led by General Enrique Loynaz del Castillo, and Taft temporarily became the Civil Governor of Cuba, personally negotiating with General Castillo for a peaceful end to the revolt. In 1907, Taft helped supervise the beginning of construction on the Panama Canal.

After serving nearly two full terms, the popular Theodore Roosevelt refused to run in the election of 1908. Instead, he promoted Taft as the next Republican candidate. With Roosevelt's help, Taft handily defeated Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan. Throughout his presidency, Taft contended with dissent from more progressive members of the Republican Party, many of whom continued to follow the political lead of former President Roosevelt.

Taft fought for the prosecution of trusts, further strengthened the Interstate Commerce Commission, established a postal savings bank and a parcel post system, expanded the civil service and promoted the enactment of two amendments to the Constitution. The 16th Amendment authorized the federal government to tax incomes; the 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913, mandated the direct election of senators by the people, replacing the previous system whereby they were selected by state legislatures. Taft also signed the , which created the United States Department of Labor. In addition, he actively pursued what he termed "dollar diplomacy" to further the economic development of less-developed nations through American investment in their infrastructures.

One of Taft's main personal goals while president was to promote world peace. Given his judicial sensibilities, he believed that international arbitration was the best means to effectuate the end of war on Earth. As such, he championed several reciprocity and arbitration treaties. In 1910, he convinced congressional Democrats to support a reciprocity treaty with Canada, but the Canadian government refused to accept it. In 1910 and 1911, however, he secured the ratification of arbitration treaties that he had successfully negotiated with the United Kingdom and France, and was thereafter known as one of the foremost advocates of world peace and arbitration.

Despite his obvious achievements, progressivists decried Taft's acceptance of the , which levied a tariff with protective schedules, his opposition to the entry of the state of Arizona into the Union because of its progressive constitution, and his growing reliance on the conservative wing of his party for political guidance. He was criticized for having too great an intimacy with conservative Senator Nelson W. Aldrich and Speaker of the House Joseph G. Cannon. By 1910, Taft's party was thoroughly divided between progressivists and the Old Right.

Progressive Republicans openly challenged Taft in the Congressional elections of 1910 and in the Republican presidential primaries of 1912. When Taft won the Republican nomination, however, the progressivists organized the United States Progressive Party (a.k.a. "Bull Moose Party") to rival him, and nominated Theodore Roosevelt as their candidate in the 1912 general election. Roosevelt's Bull Moose candidacy split the Republican vote and helped elect Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Taft himself only received electoral votes from Utah and Vermont, and came in third overall in the election.

Evidence from eyewitnesses and from Taft himself strongly suggests he had severe obstructive sleep apnea during his Presidential term of office, a consequence of his 300 to 340 pound (136 to 159 kg) weight. His legendary tendency to fall asleep in almost any circumstance, an open secret and source of embarrassment for his intimates, is now understood to have been the most obvious manifestation of the disease. Within a year of leaving the Presidency Taft lost approximately 70 pounds (32 kg), dropping his weight from 335 pounds to 264 pounds. His somnolence resolved and, less obviously, his systolic blood pressure dropped 40 to 50 mmHg (from 210 mmHg). Undoubtedly, this weight loss saved his life.

Taft appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:

Edward Douglass White - Chief Justice - 1910 (Already on the Court as Associate Justice since 1894, and the first Chief Justice to be elevated from Associate, although Chief Justice John Rutledge had previously served as an associate justice. Taft himself would succeed White as Chief Justice.)

Notably, Taft's six appointments to the Court rank third only to those of Washington and FDR, with his appointment of five new justices tied with Jackson and Lincoln. Taft's unusual opportunity to make five appointments in the single Court term of 1910-1911 came largely from the sickly composition of the Court in 1909; the youngest justice Moody was so ill as to leave the bench in the middle of the 1909 term and never return, and the four justices over 70 were in various stages of decline with three dying before the 1910 term. Perhaps as a result, four of Taft's appointments were men of relative youth and vigor at 48, 51, 53 and 54.

Upon leaving the White House in 1913, Taft was appointed Kent Professor of Constitutional Law at Yale Law School. The same year, he was elected President of the American Bar Association. He spent much of his time writing newspaper articles and books, most notably his series on American legal philosophy. He also continued to advocate world peace through international arbitration, urging nations to enter into arbitration treaties with each other and promoting the idea of a League of Nations even before the First World War began.

When World War I did break out in Europe in 1914, Taft founded the League to Enforce Peace. He was also a member of the National War Labor Board throughout the war, including during America's involvement beginning in 1917. Although continually advocating peace, he strongly favored conion once the United States entered the conflict, pleading publicly that the United States not fight a "finicky" war. He feared the war would be long, but was for fighting it out to a finish, given what he viewed as "Germany's brutality."

In 1921, President Warren G. Harding nominated Taft as Chief Justice of the United States, fulfilling his lifelong ambition. Virtually no opposition existed to the nomination, and the Senate unanimously confirmed Taft by voice vote. He readily took up the position, and served until 1930. As such, he became the only president to serve as Chief Justice, and thus is also the only former president to swear in subsequent presidents, giving the oath of office to both Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. Taft traveled to England in 1922 to study the procedural structure of the English courts and learn how they disposed of a large number of cases expeditiously. During the trip, King George V and Queen Mary received Taft and his wife as state visitors. With what he had learned in England, Taft advocated passage of the 1925 , which empowered the Supreme Court to give precedence to cases of national importance, thereby allowing the Court to work more efficiently. Taft was also the first Justice to employ two full time law clerks.

While Chief Justice, Taft wrote the opinion for the Court in over 200 cases out of the Court's ever-growing caseload. Some of his more notable opinions include:

Taft retired as chief justice on February 3, 1930, due to ill health, and was succeeded by Charles Evans Hughes, whom he had appointed to the bench while president. Taft died 33 days later on Saturday, March 8. During the last summer of his life, Taft weighed about 244 pounds, one pound more than his average weight in college. Three days later, on March 11, he became the first American president to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. His wife, Helen, was reported to have said that his service as Secretary of War was what qualified him for burial there while, in fact, anyone who serves as president and thus Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces is entitled to burial at Arlington. He is one of two presidents (the other being John F. Kennedy) and one of four chief justices buried at Arlington (the others being Earl Warren, Warren Burger, and William Rehnquist).

A third generation of the Taft family entered the national political stage in 1938. The former president's oldest son, Robert A. Taft I, was elected to the United States Senate. A vociferous critic of the New Deal, Robert Taft was a Republican leader in the Senate from 1939-1953. His other son, Charles Phelps Taft II served as mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio from 1955 to 1957. Two more generations of the Taft family later entered politics. The President's grandson, Robert Taft Jr., served a term as a Senator from Ohio from 1971-1977; the President's great-grandson, Robert A. Taft II, is the current Governor of Ohio. William Howard Taft III was U.S. ambassador to Ireland. William Howard Taft IV is a high official in the United States Department of State.

When asked about his time on the Supreme Court and as President, Chief Justice Taft famously said "I don't remember that I ever was President."

Taft was severely overweight to the point that he became stuck in the bathtub in the White House several times, prompting the installation of a new bathtub capable of holding all of the men who installed it. At 6 feet, and weighing over 350 pounds (159 kg), Taft was the largest and heaviest President. There is some evidence that his mother started calling him "my pudgy-wudgy boy" before his fifth birthday. This may have led to his disdain for the word "pudgy." In fact, it was said that an aide blacked out "pudgy" from his morning newspaper.In Manila, Philippines, an avenue is named after him, Taft Avenue. It is one of the busiest streets in the city and one of 2 major streets that the Light Rail Transit (LRT) passes through.The town of Siloam, Michigan was re-named Taft in his honor, as was a nearby school. The Iosco County town was a flagstop on the Rose City branch of the DTaft was the first US President to own a presidential automobile. He converted the White House stables into a four-car garage in 1909. [1]Taft owned a cow, Pauline, which he let graze freely on the White House lawn. Pauline was the last cow to live at the White House, and provided milk for the president and his family. [2]William Howard Taft cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.