[128]

Judicial appointments
Main article: William Howard Taft judicial appointments
Taft promoted Associate Justice Edward Douglass White to be Chief Justice of the United States.
Taft made six appointments to the Supreme Court; only George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt made more.[129] The death of Justice Rufus Peckham in October 1909 gave Taft his first opportunity. He chose an old friend and colleague from the Sixth Circuit, Horace H. Lurton of Georgia; he had in vain urged Theodore Roosevelt to appoint Lurton to the high court. Attorney General Wickersham objected that Lurton, a former Confederate soldier and a Democrat, was aged 65. Taft named Lurton anyway on December 13, 1909, and the Senate confirmed him by voice vote a week later. Lurton is still the oldest person to be made an associate justice.[l] Lurie suggested that Taft, already beset by the tariff and conservation controversies, desired to perform an official act which gave him pleasure, especially since he thought Lurton deserved it.[130]
Justice David Josiah Brewer's death on March 28, 1910, gave Taft a second opportunity to fill a seat on the high court; he chose New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes. 