Howard Taft, Butler's opposition to "radical" and "disloyal" professors at the University of Minnesota (where he had served on the Board of Regents) made him a controversial Supreme Court nominee. Farmer–Labor Senator-elect Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota opposed him, as did the Progressive Senator Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin. Also against his confirmation were labor activists, some liberal magazines (The New Republic and The Nation) and the Ku Klux Klan because he was Catholic. His appointment was supported by prominent Roman Catholics, fellow lawyers (the Minnesota State Bar Association strongly endorsed him), and business groups (especially railroad companies), as well as Minnesota's other senator, Republican Knute Nelson. Butler was confirmed by the United States Senate on December 21, 1922, by a 61–8 vote, and took the judicial oath of office on January 2, 1923. Court service As an associate justice, Butler vigorously opposed regulation of business and the implementation of welfare programs by the federal government (as unconstitutional). During the Great Depression, he ruled against the constitutionality of many "New Deal" laws – the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the National Recovery Administration – which had been supported by his fellow Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. This earned him a place among the so-called "Four Horsemen," which also included James Clark McReynolds, George Sutherland, and Willis Van Devanter. During his sixteen years on the bench, Justice Butler authored 327 majority opinions as well as 50 minority opinions. He wrote the majority opinion (6–3) in United States v. Schwimmer, in which the Hungarian immigrant's application for citizenship was denied because of her candid refusal to take an oath to "take up arms" for her adopted country. In Palko v. Connecticut, Butler was the lone dissenter; the rest of the justices believed that a state was not restrained from trying a man a second time for the same crime. Butler believed this violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He sided with the majority in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, holding unconstitutional an Oregon state law that prohibited parents from sending their children to private or religious schools. In the 1927 decision for Buck v. Bell, Butler was the only Justice who dissented from the 8–1 ruling and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s opinion holding that the forced sterilization of an allegedly "feeble-minded" woman in Virginia was constitutional. Holmes believed that Butler's religion influenced his thinking in Buck, remarking that "Butler knows