Robert H. Jackson

Robert Houghwout Jackson (February 13, 1892 – October 9, 1954) was United States Attorney General (1940 - 1941) and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1941 - 1954). He was also the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.

Early life

Born in Spring Creek Township, Warren County, Pennsylvania and raised in Frewsburg, New York, Jackson graduated from Frewsburg High School in 1909 and spent the next year as a post-graduate student attending Jamestown High School in Jamestown, New York. Jackson never attended college. At age 18, he went to work as an apprentice in a Jamestown law office, then attended Albany Law School, in Albany, New York, completing a two-year course study in one year. Jackson then returned to Jamestown to apprentice for his third year. He passed the New York Bar Exam in 1913 and set up practice in Jamestown, New York.

U.S. Federal appointments, 1934 - 1940

Jackson was appointed to federal office by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1934. Jackson served initially as general counsel of the U.S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Internal Revenue (today's Internal Revenue Service). In 1936, Jackson became Assistant Attorney General heading the Tax Division of the Department of Justice, and in 1937 he became Assistant Attorney General heading the Antitrust Division. In 1938, Jackson became United States Solicitor General, serving until January 1940 as the government's chief advocate before the Supreme Court.

U.S. Attorney General, 1940 - 1941

Jackson was appointed Attorney General by Roosevelt in 1940, replacing Frank Murphy. When Harlan Fiske Stone replaced the retiring Charles Evans Hughes as Chief Justice in 1941, Roosevelt appointed Jackson to the resulting vacant Associate's seat.

U.S. Supreme Court, 1941 - 1954

Jackson is widely considered by legal scholars as one of the greatest Supreme Court justices in history, known particularly for his vivid writing style. In 1943, Jackson authored the majority opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943), which overturned a public school regulation making it mandatory to salute the flag and imposing penalties of expulsion and prosecution upon students that failed to comply. Jackson's stirring language in Barnette concerning individual rights is widely quoted. Jackson's concurring opinion in 1952's Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (involving President Harry Truman's seizure of steel mills during the Korean War to avert a strike), where Jackson formulated a three-tier test for evaluating claims of presidential power, remains one of the most widely-cited opinions in Supreme Court history (it was quoted repeatedly by Supreme Court nominees John Roberts and Samuel Alito during their recent confirmation hearings).

International Military Tribunal, 1945 - c. 1946

In 1945, President Truman appointed Jackson, who took a leave of absence from the Supreme Court, to serve as U.S. chief of counsel for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. He helped draft the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal, which created the legal basis for the Nuremberg Trials. He then served in Nuremberg, Germany, as United States chief prosecutor at the international Nuremberg trial. Jackson pursued his prosecutorial role with a great deal of vigor (for instance, referring in arguments to Hermann Göring as being "half militarist, half gangster"), and not a little oratorical elegance (his opening and closing arguments before the Nuremberg court are widely considered among the best speeches of the 20th century). However, his management of the American prosecution case lacked clarity and drive and his inexperience of effective use of cross-examination was exposed, in particular, by Göring himself. He resigned his position as prosecutor after the first trial and returned to the U.S. in the midst of controversy.

Later life, controversy and internal Supreme Court bickering

Jackson had informally been promised the Chief Justiceship by Roosevelt; however, the seat came open while Jackson was in Germany, and FDR was no longer alive. President Truman was faced with two factions, one recommending Jackson for the seat, the other advocating Hugo Black. In an attempt to avoid controversy, Truman appointed Fred M. Vinson. Jackson blamed machinations by Black for his being passed over for the seat and publicly exposed some of Black's controversial behavior and feuding within the Court. The controversy was heavily covered in the press and cast the New Deal Court in a negative light.

Jackson died in Washington, D.C. at the age of 62 and was interred in Frewsburg, New York.

One of Jackson's law clerks, William Rehnquist, was appointed to the Court in 1971 and became Chief Justice in 1986. During both confirmation hearings, Rehnquist was questioned about a memo written in connection with the landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education that argued in favor of affirming the separate-but-equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson. Rehnquist attributed the views to Jackson, a claim disputed by numerous scholars and Jackson's personal secretary. See the discussion in the Rehnquist article.

Jackson was played by Alec Baldwin in the 2000 TNT television film Nuremberg.

Quotes

"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections." - Opinion for the Court in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette 319 U.S. 624 (1943)
"Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard." - from the Barnette opinion
"We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy."
"If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us." - Nuremberg Tribunal
"We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well." - Nuremberg Tribunal
"effect of the religious freedom Amendment to our Constitution was to take every form of propagation of religion out of the realm of things which could directly or indirectly be made public business, and thereby be supported in whole or in part at taxpayers' expense. That is a difference which the Constitution sets up between religion and almost every other subject matter of legislation, a difference which goes to the very root of religious freedom[... This freedom was first in the Bill of Rights because it was first in the forefathers' minds; it was set forth in absolute terms, and its strength is its rigidity. It was intended not only to keep the states' hands out of religion, but to keep religion's hands off the state, and, above all, to keep bitter religious controversy out of public life by denying to every denomination any advantage from getting control of public policy or the public purse." - dissent in Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing TP., 330 U.S. 1 (1947)
"The Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact." (paraphrase) - comment in his dissent to Terminello v. City of Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949).)
"But when notice is a person's due, process which is a mere gesture is not 'due process.'" Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U.S. 306 (1950)
"It is possible to hold a faith with enough confidence to believe that what should be rendered to God does not need to be decided and collected by Caesar." From the dissent in Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306 (1952)
"The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion it will cease to be free for religion - except for the sect that can win political power." From the dissent in Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306 (1952)
"We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final" - on the Supreme Court; opinion concurring in judgement in Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443 (1953) at 15.

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