WASHINGTON — There are the legal giants of the Supreme Court, justices such as John Marshall, Louis D. Brandeis and Earl Warren. Then there is Rufus W. Peckham.

“He is one of the pygmies of the court,” said Leon Friedman, a law professor at Hofstra University, about the justice most remembered — if he is remembered at all — as the author of the oft-maligned Lochner v. New York decision, a 1905 ruling that prevented the states from limiting the hours of overworked bakers.

Justice Peckham does have one distinguishing characteristic and, as today’s political fight over the Supreme Court rages, it is rescuing him from obscurity. He was the last Supreme Court justice nominated by a Democratic president — Grover Cleveland — and approved by a Republican-controlled Senate, a step taken in 1895, and on a voice vote, no less.

The case of Justice Peckham highlights the unusual situation Senate Republicans find themselves in after the death of Antonin Scalia. While Democratic-controlled Senates have considered and approved 13 Supreme Court nominees by Republican presidents since 1895 — the most recent in 1991 — contemporary Republicans have never faced that prospect and have no experience doing so, a fact that might help explain their extreme reluctance to even take up President Obama’s choice for the court, Judge Merrick B. Garland.