Legal History Commons^™

The Faith Of My Fathers, Robert H. Jackson, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In his final years, United States Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson worked on a number of autobiographical writing projects. The previously unknown Jackson text that follows this Introduction is one such writing. Justice Jackson wrote this essay in longhand on thirteen yellow legal pad pages in the early 1950s. It is Jackson’s writing about religion in his life.

After Justice Jackson’s death in 1954, his secretary Elsie L. Douglas found the thirteen pages among his papers. She concluded that the pages were “undoubtedly prepared as part of his autobiography,” typed them up, and gave a file folder containing …

Legacies Of Nuremberg, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

I am very grateful to the leaders and sponsoring organizations that have brought the Dialogs together for ten years, particularly this year in this very special place. I also thank, humbly, Germany and Nuremberg. We are seventy years out from a Nuremberg trial process that was filled with participants who could not have imagined the Germany, the Nuremberg city of human rights, and their sponsorship and teaching, that we all are beneficiaries of today. It is to the great credit of today's generations of German leaders that they have built this Nuremberg.

My topic, "The Legacy of Nuremberg," is …

No College, No Prior Clerkship: How Jim Marsh Became Justice Jackson’S Law Clerk, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In his first four years on the Supreme Court, Justice Robert H. Jackson employed, in sequence, three young attorneys as his law clerks. The first, John F. Costelloe, was a Harvard Law School graduate and former Harvard Law Review editor who until summer 1941 was, like then attorney general Jackson, working at the U.S. Department of Justice. Costelloe became Justice Jackson’s first law clerk shortly after his July 1941 appointment to the Court and stayed for a little over two years. Jackson’s next law clerk, Phil C. Neal, came to Jackson in 1943 after graduating from Harvard Law School, …

Remarks At The Naming Ceremony, Robert H. Jackson United States Courthouse, Buffalo, New York, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Thank you, Chief Judge Skretny, for that generous introduction. Thank you and congratulations, for vision and dedicated efforts, to Senators Schumer and Gillibrand; Representative Higgins; Chief Judge Skretny and Judge Arcara; Chief Judge Katzmann; Chief Judge Preska; all of their judicial and court colleagues; Administrator Pease; Mayor Brown and city officials; Buffalo law, business and civic leaders; and the people—all of the lucky “Jacksonland” people—of the Western District of New York.

As has been noted, young Robert H. Jackson’s life path ran right through this site. Born in Spring Creek, Pennsylvania, Jackson grew up there and then in Chautauqua …

Introduction Of Chief Justice Roberts, At The Robert H. Jackson Center, May 17, 2013, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

A backdrop to this event is an ongoing, if entirely friendly, War Between the States … or at least between two States.

As a boy, Robert H. Jackson and family moved from the state of his birth to a second state, where he completed grade school and high school and then embarked on life. Our honored guest, John G. Roberts, Jr., did the same thing in his boyhood. In Jackson’s case, following his birth and early boyhood on the family farm in Spring Creek Township, Warren County, Pennsylvania, the move was to Frewsburg, New York, and then to Jamestown—Pennsylvania …

Rehnquist's Missing Letter: A Former Law Clerk's 1955 Thoughts On Justice Jackson And Brown, John Q. Barrett, Brad Snyder

Faculty Publications

"I think that Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed." That's what Supreme Court law clerk William H. Rehnquist wrote privately in December 1952 to his boss, Justice Robert H. Jackson. When the memorandum was made public in 1971 and Rehnquist's Supreme Court confirmation hung in the balance, he claimed that the memorandum reflected Jackson's views, not Rehnquist's. Rehnquist was confirmed, but his explanation triggered charges that he had lied and smeared the memory of one of the Court's most revered justices. This Essay analyzes a newly discovered document—a letter Rehnquist wrote to Justice Felix Frankfurter in 1955, …