ROBERT H. JACKSON

ROBERT H. JACKSON:
New Deal Lawyer,
Supreme Court Justice,
Nuremberg Prosecutor

Only one man in history served as United States Solicitor General, Attorney General, and Supreme Court Justice. Yet he never attended college or earned a law degree. In the first biography about Jackson published in fifty years, Jarrow details his journey from rural New York to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's inner circle, the Supreme Court bench, and the Nuremberg Trial.

The Life of Robert H. Jackson

 

EARLY LIFE

Young Robert Jackson. (Robert H. Jackson Center)

Robert Houghwout Jackson was born on a farm in Spring Creek, Pennsylvania, on February 13, 1892.  He spent most of his youth in the small town of Frewsburg, New York, where he graduated from high school in 1909 as valedictorian.  Eager to take subjects that his small school had not offered, Jackson studied an extra year at the larger high school in nearby Jamestown, New York.

 

Bob Jackson as a teen.   (Robert H. Jackson Center)

 

 

By the time Jackson was fourteen years old, he had already become a popular speaker at local gatherings in his hometown area. In high school, he became a top-notch debater. His early speeches and essays reveal his skill with words. As an adult, Jackson was known for his clear use of language in oration and writing.

“A correct and full understanding of the written word is the threshold of knowledge, and ability to write simple direct English is the beginning of power.” 1  ~Robert H. Jackson

 

Jackson, age 18 [left front] with his trophy-winning high school debate team. (The Red and Green, 1910 yearbook, Jamestown, NY)

 

Jackson’s ambition was to become a lawyer. After graduating from Jamestown High School at age 18, he began an apprenticeship in his cousin’s Jamestown law office. The next year he borrowed tuition money from his uncle in order to attend Albany Law School in New York’s capital. At the end of one year of courses, Jackson received a certificate of graduation, though not a law degree. Before Jackson could practice law in New York, he had to complete an additional year of apprenticeship. Finally at age 21, he passed the bar exam and set up his law practice in Jamestown. Except for that single year of law school, Jackson had no formal education beyond high school. But his passion for knowledge made him a lifelong student who read widely. 

“The more [learning] one has, the more he knows he has missed. It is wealth no thief can take away...How rich you will become in this kind of treasure is wholly dependent upon your own effort.”2 ~Robert H. Jackson 

NEW DEAL LAWYER

As a New York Democrat, Robert Jackson knew Franklin Delano Roosevelt for twenty years before FDR became president. In 1934, Jackson went to Washington to work in the Roosevelt administration, serving as a leading attorney at the Treasury and Justice Departments. In 1938, President Roosevelt elevated Jackson to the position of Solicitor General in charge of arguing the government’s side of cases before the Supreme Court. Jackson once wrote: “The only office I ever really coveted was that of Solicitor General of the United States.”3

Two years later, President Roosevelt promoted Jackson again, this time to Attorney General. As head of the Justice Department and member of FDR’s Cabinet, Jackson helped Roosevelt prepare for what many feared was America’s inevitable entry into World War II.  Jackson was involved in crafting the legal framework for the Destroyers for Bases Agreement and the Lend-Lease Act, both designed to help countries already fighting the Axis powers.

SUPREME COURT JUSTICE

In the summer of 1941, President Roosevelt nominated Jackson to the Supreme Court.  On July 11, Jackson was sworn

Jackson gives his Opening Address at the Nuremberg Trial, November 21, 1945 (Truman Library)

in as an associate justice in a ceremony at the White House.

Unlike some Supreme Court justices, Jackson wrote all of his opinions himself. According to one of his law clerks, he worked hard to make his writing seem effortless. His opinions received widespread praise during his lifetime, and today Jackson continues to be admired as one of the best writers to sit on the Supreme Court. 

NUREMBERG PROSECUTOR

After the Allies defeated Hitler’s Germany in spring 1945, President Harry Truman appointed Jackson to be chief U.S. prosecutor at the trial against the Nazi leadership. Jackson took a leave from the Supreme Court in order to work with the British, French, and Soviets in setting up the International Military Tribunal. He took the lead in negotiating the London Agreement and Charter, which established legal guidelines for the trial. The process took more than a month in the summer of 1945. 

The trial, held in Nuremberg, Germany, began in November 1945. Jackson led the American prosecution team. His opening and closing addresses at the trial are known as two of the great  legal arguments. Jackson said at the time, “This is the first case I have ever tried when I had first to persuade others that a court should be established, help negotiate its establishment, and when that was done, not only prepare my case but find myself a courtroom in which to try it.”4

Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson in his judicial robes. (Robert H. Jackson Center)

 

The Nuremberg Trial took far longer than Jackson expected, and he missed an entire Supreme Court term. The final verdict was delivered by the Tribunal on October 1, 1946, nearly a year after the trial began. 19 of the 22 Nazi defendants were found guilty, and 12 were sentenced to death by hanging. More than fifty years later, the International Military Tribunal remains a model for trials of war criminals throughout the world.

“The hard months at Nuremberg were well spent in the most important, enduring, and constructive work of my life.”5 ~ Robert H. Jackson 

Jackson returned to the Supreme Court, where he wrote more than 300 opinions. A few of his frequently quoted opinions include: West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943),  Korematsu v. United States (1944),  Terminiello v. City of Chicago (1949), and Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company v. Sawyer (1952). One of the final Court decisions of Jackson’s career was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954).

“The power of the Court to protect individual or minority rights has on the other side of the coin the power to restrain the majority.”6 ~ Robert H. Jackson

On October 9, 1954, Robert H. Jackson died of a heart attack in Washington, D.C., at the age of 62. He was buried in his hometown of Frewsburg, New York.  Jackson and his wife had two children and eight grandchildren. 

 

“He kept the ancient landmarks and built the new.” Robert H. Jackson’s grave, Maple Grove Cemetery, Frewsburg, New York.

1 Robert H. Jackson, “Tribute to Mary Willard, Jamestown, NY,  June 10, 1931,” Robert H. Jackson Center, www.roberthjackson.org/Man/theman2-7-1-1.

 

2 Jackson, “Address at Dedication of Jamestown High School Building, November 15, 1935,” Robert H. Jackson Center, www.roberthjackson.org/Man/theman2-7-2-1.

 

3 Jackson, unpublished autobiography, Box 189, Robert H. Jackson Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

 

4 Jackson, quoted in Telford Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (Boston: Little, Brown,1992), 503.

 

5 Jackson, introduction to Whitney R. Harris, Tyranny on Trial: The Trial of the Major German War Criminals at the End of World War II at Nuremberg, Germany, 1945-46. (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1999),  xxxvii.

 

6 Jackson, The Supreme Court in the American System of Government (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955), 77.

Find out more!

Robert Houghwout Jackson

• WSKG Public Radio (interview)
  Listen to Gail Jarrow discuss her biography of Robert Jackson.

• Robert H. Jackson Center, Jamestown, New York www.roberthjackson.org
  Read Jackson’s judicial opinions and articles. Listen to his recorded speeches. Watch interviews with his family, friends, and colleagues.
  • Watch Gail Jarrow explain to a group at Chautauqua Institution why she wrote about Robert H. Jackson.

Roosevelt/Truman/Eisenhower Administrations

• President Roosevelt congratulates Robert Jackson after he took the oath as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, July 11, 1941. (Library of Congress)

  Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, New York www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu

• Truman Presidential Museum and Library, Independence, Missouri www.trumanlibrary.org

• Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, Abilene, Kansas www.eisenhower.utexas.edu
  Library Web sites contain information about each president’s life and administration, including documents, speeches, and photographs. Sites have student sections with additional research sources.

Supreme Court

• Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D.C. www.supremecourtus.gov
  Includes history of the Supreme Court, biographies of the justices, information about recent cases and Court procedures. The Court building is open to the public. Take a tour, listen to oral arguments, and watch the justices in action.

• “The Supreme Court,” PBS series www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt
  Features history of the Court and its notable decisions, interviews with justices, and lists of print and online resources.

• Supreme Court Historical Society www.supremecourthistory.org
  Gives overview of the Court’s history and traditions with special sections on landmark cases.

• U.S. Supreme Court Center www.supreme.justia.com
  Contains the complete text of Supreme Court rulings. Includes links to commentary and blogs about the Court.

• Oyez Project www.oyez.org
  A multimedia archive of the U.S. Supreme Court. Take a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building. Listen to selected oral arguments.

• Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School www.law.cornell.edu/supct/index.html
  Provides text of Supreme Court decisions, both historic and current.

• The Brown Foundation www.brownvboard.org
  Features information about the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.
  

The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial

• Avalon Project at Yale Law School http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/imt.asp
  Contains complete transcript of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.

• “The Nuremberg Trials,” American Experience www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/nuremberg
  Web site for the PBS program provides timeline, photographs, and lists of World War II books and Web sites.

• Famous Trials www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/ftrials.htm
  Includes an account of all Nuremberg Trials, 1945-49, by Douglas O. Linder, law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. Has links to additional resources.

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. www.ushmm.org
  Features extensive information about the Holocaust, including the doctors’ trial at Nuremberg. Lists research sources.

• International Criminal Court www.icc-cpi.int
  Discusses the ICC’s history, organization, and recent cases.

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