Robert Houghwout Jackson (February 13, 1892 – October 9, 1954) was an American lawyer, jurist, and politician who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1941 until his death in 1954. He had previously served as United States Solicitor General and United States Attorney General, and is the only person to have held all three of those offices. Jackson was also notable for his work at the Nuremberg trials prosecuting Nazi war criminals following World War II. Jackson developed a reputation as one of the best writers on the Supreme Court and one of the most committed to enforcing due process as protection from overreaching federal agencies.
Jackson was the most recent U.S. Supreme Court justice who did not earn a law degree. He was admitted to the bar via the older tradition of an internship under an established lawyer ("reading law") after studying at Albany Law School for a year. Jackson is recognized for his advice that, "Any lawyer worth his salt will tell the suspect, in no uncertain terms, to make no statement to the police under any circumstances",Watts v. Indiana , 338 U.S. 49, 59. and for his aphorism describing the Supreme Court, "We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final."
He was viewed as a moderate liberal, and is known for his dissents in Terminiello v. City of Chicago, Zorach v. Clauson, Everson v. Board of Education, and Korematsu v. United States, as well as his majority opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette and his concurring opinion in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. Justice Antonin Scalia, who occupied the seat once held by Jackson, considered Jackson to be "the best legal stylist of the 20th century".
Early life Jackson was born on his family's farm in Spring Creek Township, Warren County, Pennsylvania, on February 13, 1892, and was raised in Frewsburg, New York. The son of William Eldred Jackson and Angelina Houghwout, he graduated from Frewsburg High School in 1909 and spent the next year as a post-graduate student attending Jamestown High School, where he worked to improve his writing skills.
Jackson decided on a legal career; since attendance at college or law school was not a requirement if a student learned under the tutelage of an established attorney, at age 18 he began to read law with the Jamestown, New York, firm in which his uncle, Frank Mott, was a partner. His uncle soon introduced him to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was then serving as a member of the New York State Senate. Jackson attended Albany Law School of Union University from 1911 to 1912. At the time, students at Albany Law School had three options: taking individual courses without receiving a degree, completing a two-year program and receiving an LL.B. degree, or demonstrating the knowledge required of a first-year student and then taking the second year of the two-year program, which produced a certificate of completion. Jackson chose the third option; he successfully completed the second-year courses, and received his certificate in 1912.
After his year at Albany Law School, Jackson returned to Jamestown to complete his studies. He attained admission to the bar in 1913 at age twenty-one, then joined a law practice in Jamestown. In 1916, he married Irene Alice Gerhardt, in Albany. In 1917, Jackson was recruited to work for Penney, Killeen & Nye, a leading Buffalo firm, primarily defending the International Railway Company in trials and appeals. In late 1918, Jackson was recruited back to Jamestown to serve as the city's corporation counsel.
Over the next 15 years, he built a successful practice, and became a leading lawyer in New York State; he also enhanced his reputation nationally, through leadership roles with bar associations and other legal organizations. In 1930, Jackson was elected to membership in the American Law Institute; in 1933, he was elected Chairman of the American Bar Association's Conference of Bar Association Delegates (a predecessor to today's ABA House of Delegates).
Jackson became active in politics as a Democrat; in 1916, he spearheaded Jamestown's local Wilson for President organization. In the years during and after World War I, he was a member of the New York State Democratic Committee. He also continued his association with Roosevelt; when Roosevelt served as Governor of New York from 1929 to 1933, he appointed Jackson to a commission which reviewed the state judicial system and proposed reforms. He served on that commission from 1931 to 1939. Jackson also turned down Roosevelt's offer to appoint him to the New York Public Service Commission, because he preferred to remain in private practice.
Federal appointments, 1934–1938 In 1932, Jackson was active in Franklin Roosevelt's presidential campaign as chairman of an organization called Democratic Lawyers for Roosevelt. (Another Robert H. Jackson was also active in the Roosevelt campaign. That Jackson (1880–1973) was Secretary of the Democratic National Committee, and was a resident of New Hampshire.)
In 1934, Jackson agreed to join the Roosevelt administration; he served initially as Assistant General Counsel of the U.S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Internal Revenue (today's Internal Revenue Service), where he was in charge of 300 lawyers who tried cases before the Board of Tax Appeals. 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.
Jackson was a supporter of the New Deal, litigating against corporations and utilities holding companies. He participated in the 1934 prosecution of Samuel Insull, the 1935 income tax case against Andrew Mellon, and the 1937 anti-trust case against Alcoa, in which the Mellon family held an important interest.
U.S. Solicitor General, 1938–1940 In March 1938, Jackson became United States Solicitor General, succeeding Stanley Forman Reed, who had been appointed to the Supreme Court. Jackson served as Solicitor General until January 1940, working as the government's chief advocate before the U.S. Supreme Court. During his time in this post, he argued 44 cases to the Supreme Court on behalf of the federal government, and lost only six. His record of accomplishment caused Justice Louis Brandeis to once remark that Jackson should be Solicitor General for life.
Roosevelt regarded Jackson as a possible successor to the presidency in 1940, and worked with his staff on an effort to raise Jackson's public profile. Their plan was to mention Jackson favorably in presidential remarks as often as possible, and to have Jackson take part frequently in Roosevelt's public appearances. Roosevelt and his advisers next intended for Jackson to become the Democratic nominee for Governor of New York in 1938. They abandoned their effort to create a groundswell of support for Jackson's gubernatorial candidacy when they ran into resistance from state Democratic Party leaders. In addition, Roosevelt's decision to run for a third term in 1940 rendered moot the need to identify and promote a successor. Instead of running for Governor or President, Jackson joined Roosevelt's cabinet when he was appointed as Attorney General.
U.S. Attorney General, 1940–1941 Jackson was appointed as United States Attorney General by Roosevelt, on January 4, 1940, replacing Frank Murphy, whom Roosevelt had appointed to the Supreme Court. As Attorney General, Jackson supported a bill introduced by Sam Hobbs that would have legalized wiretapping by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or any other government agency, if it was suspected that a felony was occurring.U.S. House Subcommittee no. 1 of the Committee on the Judiciary, To Authorize Wire Tapping. Hearings on H.R. 2266, H.R. 3099, 77th Cong., 1st sess., 1941, 1, 257 The bill was opposed by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman James Lawrence Fly, and it did not pass. Section A. While in office, he also helped President Roosevelt organize the Lend-Lease agreement, which allowed the United States to supply materials to help with the war effort to the Allied forces, before formally entering World War II.
U.S. Supreme Court, 1941–1954 On June 12, 1941, Roosevelt nominated Jackson as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, to fill the vacancy created when Harlan Fiske Stone replaced Charles Evans Hughes as chief justice. Jackson was confirmed by the United States Senate on July 7, 1941, and took the judicial oath of office on July 11, 1941. On the Court, he was known for his eloquent writing style and championing of individual liberties.
In 1943, Jackson wrote the majority opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, which overturned a public school regulation making it mandatory to salute the flag, and imposing penalties of expulsion and prosecution upon students who 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 (forbidding President Harry Truman's seizure of steel mills during the Korean War to avert a strike), in which Jackson formulated a three-tier test for evaluating claims of Presidential power, remains one of the most widely cited opinions in Supreme Court history.
Feud with Hugo Black Justices Jackson and Hugo Black had profound professional and personal disagreements dating back to October 1941, the first term during which they served together on the Supreme Court. According to Dennis Hutchinson, editor of The Supreme Court Review, Jackson objected to Black's practice of importing his personal preferences into his jurisprudence. Hutchinson quotes Jackson as having remarked, "With few exceptions, we all knew which side of a case Black would vote on when he read the names of the parties."Id. at 230. While Hutchinson points out that Jackson objected to Black's style of jurisprudence in such cases as Minersville v. Gobitis (1940) and United States v. Bethlehem Steel (1942), Black's involvement in the Jewell Ridge case struck Jackson as especially injudicious.
In Jewell Ridge Coal Corp. v. Mine Workers (1945), the Supreme Court faced the issue of whether to grant the coal company's petition for a rehearing, on the grounds that the victorious miners were, in a previous matter, represented by Crampton P. Harris, who was Justice Black's former law partner and personal lawyer. Despite this apparent conflict of interest, Black lobbied the Court for a per curiam denial of the petition. Justice Jackson objected, with the result that Jackson filed a concurrence disassociating himself from the ruling and, by implication, criticizing Black for not addressing the conflict of interest. Jackson also strongly objected to Black's judicial conduct in Jewell Ridge for another reason. As Jackson later alleged, while Justice Murphy was preparing his opinion, Black urged that the Court hand down its decision without waiting for the opinion and dissent. In Jackson's eyes, the "...only apparent reason behind this proposal was to announce the decision in time to influence the contract negotiations during the coal strike" between the coal company and the miners, which were taking place at the time.Id. at 208.