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Religion And The First Justice Harlan: A Case Study In Late Nineteenth Century Presbyterian Constitutionalism, James W. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, the Author argues that Harlan's religion and its values informed both his personal and his public life. Harlan's close personal friend, Justice Brewer, once commented on Harlan's personal attachment to the two "fundamental" documents in his life: the Bible and the Constitution. Justice Brewer suggested that Harlan had one hand on the Bible, and the other hand on the Constitution when he went to bed every night. Although it is widely known that Harlan was a religious man, only recently has any scholar paid much attention to this fact. No one has fully described the principles of …