White, Edward Douglass, Jr (1845–1921)

US jurist. Elected to the US Senate in 1891, he was nominated by President Cleveland as associative justice to the US Supreme Court in 1893, and under President Taft he was nominated as chief justice 1911–21. During his office the Court made important decisions on US economic policy as in United States v. E C Knight and Co. (1895) when he joined the majority in weakening the Sherman Antitrust Act by removing manufacture of goods from its purview.

Born in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, White attended the Jesuit College in New Orleans, and Georgetown University, but left his college studies to serve in the Confederate Army. In 1865, after the American Civil War, he studied law at the University of Louisiana Law School in New Orleans; he was admitted to the bar in 1868. Becoming active in Democratic politics, he was elected to the state senate in 1874 and was a justice of the Louisiana supreme court 1878–80.