courts—which he accepted. Rutledge appeared before a Senate subcommittee; its members promptly endorsed the nomination. The full Senate speedily confirmed him by voice vote on April 4, 1939, and he took the oath of office on May 2. At the time, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard a unique variety of matters: appeals from the federal district court in Washington, petitions to review the decisions of administrative agencies, and cases (similar to those decided by state supreme courts) arising from the District's local court system. As a judge of that court, therefore, Rutledge had the opportunity to write opinions on a wide variety of topics. In Wiecek's words, his 118 opinions "reflected his sympathetic views toward organized labor, the New Deal, and noneconomic individual rights". In Busey v. District of Columbia, for instance, he dissented when the majority upheld several Jehovah's Witnesses' convictions for distributing religious literature without securing a license and paying a tax. Writing that "[t]axed speech is not free speech", Rutledge argued that the government could not charge those who wished to communicate on the streets. His opinion for the court in Wood v. United States reversed a conviction for robbery that had been secured after the defendant pleaded guilty at a preliminary hearing without having been informed of his right against self-incrimination. Rutledge wrote that the preliminary hearing was not supposed to be "a trap for luring the unwary into confession or admission which is fatal or prejudicial"; he held that a plea was not voluntary if the defendant was not aware of his constitutional rights. Rutledge's jurisprudence emphasized the spirit of the law over the letter of the law; he rejected the use of technicalities to penalize individuals or to circumvent a law's underlying purpose. During his time on the Court of Appeals, he never rendered a single decision adverse to organized labor, and his rulings tended to be favorable toward administrative agencies and the New Deal more generally. Supreme Court nomination In October 1942, Justice James F. Byrnes resigned from the Supreme Court, creating the ninth and final vacancy of Roosevelt's presidency. As a result of Roosevelt's many previous appointments to the Court, there was "no obvious successor, no obvious political debt to be paid", according to the scholar Henry J. Abraham. Some prominent figures, including Justices Felix Frankfurter and Harlan F. Stone, encouraged Roosevelt to appoint the distinguished jurist