born Nov. 29, 1816, Lyme, Conn., U.S.
died March 23, 1888, Washington, D.C.
U.S. jurist.
The son of a justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, he practiced law in Toledo, Ohio; in his most notable case, he prosecuted the Alabama claims . In 1874 he was appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States by Pres. Ulysses S. Grant ; he served on the court until his death. In U.S. v. Cruikshank , Waite stated that, despite its apparently plain language, the Fifteenth Amendment had not conferred a federal right of suffrage on African Americans, because "the right to vote comes from the states." In his most famous opinion, Munn v. Illinois (1877), he upheld legislation fixing maximum rates chargeable by grain elevators and railroads, declaring that a business or private property "affected with a public interest" was subject to governmental regulation.