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Stone, Harlan Fiske,
1872–1946, American jurist,
12th Chief Justice of the United States (1941–46), b. Chesterfield, N.H. A
graduate (1898) of Columbia Univ. law school, he was admitted (1899) to the bar,
practiced law in New York City, and lectured at the Columbia law school, where
he became professor (1902) and dean (1910). He resigned his deanship in 1923
and, as U.S. Attorney General (1924–25) under President Coolidge, helped to
restore faith in the Dept. of Justice after the Teapot Dome scandals. Appointed
(1925) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, he established a reputation for
his vigorous minority opinions, especially those in which he defended the social
and economic welfare legislation of the New Deal against the conservative
majority. Stone saw many of his minority opinions later accepted as majority
decisions. He succeeded Charles Evans Hughes as Chief Justice. Public Control
of Business (1940) is a selection of Stone's opinions as Associate Justice.
From Butler Papers
After listing several accomplished jurists from New Hampshire
.....
To this distinguished group of native sons, New Hampshire added. With honor and
a deep sense of pride the name of Harlan Fiske Stone, 12th Chief Justice of the
United States and a great American.
Historians tell us that the passing of time is sometimes necessary to gain the
perspective with which properly to judge a man, but the passing of time is not
(necessary to judge the character and contribution to living of a man like
Harlan Fiske Stone. The deep sense of duty that prompted him to accept public
office despite the lure of great wealth that awaited him in private practice,
and his Intellectual integrity, that made it impossible ever to classify him
accurately with a mere label, represent virtues that need no passing years to
appreciate fully. In times as troubled as these when the need for men of stature
has never been greater, it Is reas to gather here and honor a man who had that
quality. But then it is always reassuring to tell the story of a man who rose
from humble circumstances to a position of great power and importance and. yet
never lost the common t Such a story is typically American. It is the story of
Harlan Stone’s life.
His mother, Ann Sophia Butler, taught school here in
Chesterfield before she married, and from her we may assume her son gained
something of that love for teaching which he never lost, His father, Frederick
Lauson Stone, was a farmer, and it was on a farm that Harlan spent his boyhood.
A few years after his birth the family moved down this valley 4-0 miles or so to
Amherst, Massachusetts where the late Chief Justice began his public school
training.
At one time it seemed that Harlan Stone might become a farmer and for a while he
attended agricultural school. But later he transferred. to Amherst College,
where his scholastic record soon gave indication of his future success in the
law. He managed “THE A. STUD and was a member of Phi Beta kappa. At Amherst,
Stone was president of his class and played. right guard on one of his alma
mater greatest football teams, a tean that won the distinction so dear to
Amherst men of defeating their rival, Williams, by the score of 6o to 0. Nor
that all, for his class mates voted. him as the member of their class who would.
become most famous. All this was in addition to his work as salesman for the new
fangled writing machines ——type—
riters—--., the selling of insurance and tutoring of other students, all to help
do— ray the cost of a college education..
The record. also reveals, I relate with understandable pleasure, that he was nce
chairman of the Republican Club at Amherst and it was there, too, that he first
et Calvin Coolidge who was a class behind him. One might think that with the aca—
einic success he won and. the numerous additional activities I have mentioned,
Harlan tone would have been too busy for other interests. As a matter of fact,
he was iso chairman of a student committee which drew up a report credited. to
have led to he ousting of a college president who was somewhat arbitrary in
dealing with the acuity and students. This feat led one commentator to conclude
that,
“The great thing that Stone learned at Amherst was not to
abandon hell—raising but to subdue it to due process of the law.”
From
Virtuology.com
Born October 11, 1872, in Chesterfield, NH
Died April 22, 1946, in Washington, DC
Federal Judicial Service:
Supreme Court of the United States
Nominated by Calvin Coolidge on January 5, 1925, to a seat vacated by Joseph
McKenna; Confirmed by the Senate on February 5, 1925, and received commission on
February 5, 1925. Service terminated on July 3, 1941, due to appointment to
another judicial position.
Supreme Court of the United States, Chief Justice
Nominated by Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 12, 1941, to a seat vacated by
Charles Evans Hughes; Confirmed by the Senate on June 27, 1941, and received
commission on July 3, 1941. Service terminated on April 22, 1946, due to death.
Education:
Amherst College, B.A., 1894
Amherst College, M.A., 1897
Columbia Law School, LL.B., 1898
Professional Career:
Faculty, Columbia Law School, 1898-1905
Clerk, private law firms, New York City, 1898-1899
Private practice, New York City, 1905-1910
Professor and dean, Columbia Law School, 1906
Dean, Columbia Law School, 1910-1923
Attorney General of the United States, 1924
Race or Ethnicity: White
Gender: Male
Other links
Swiss
Stamps???
Signed document
Presidential Oaths of Office (he's on
the list twice)
From
FactMonster.com:
Stone, Harlan Fiske,
1872–1946, American
jurist, 12th Chief Justice of the United States (1941–46), b. Chesterfield,
N.H. A graduate (1898) of Columbia Univ. law school, he was admitted (1899) to
the bar, practiced law in New York City, and lectured at the Columbia law
school, where he became professor (1902) and dean (1910). He resigned his
deanship in 1923 and, as U.S. Attorney General (1924–25) under President
Coolidge, helped to restore faith in the Dept. of Justice after the Teapot
Dome scandals. Appointed (1925) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, he
established a reputation for his vigorous minority opinions, especially those
in which he defended the social and economic welfare legislation of the New
Deal against the conservative majority. Stone saw many of his minority
opinions later accepted as majority decisions. He succeeded Charles Evans
Hughes as Chief Justice. Public Control of Business (1940) is a
selection of Stone's opinions as Associate Justice.
See biography by A. T. Mason (1956, repr. 1968) and study by
S. J. Konefsky (1946, repr. 1971).
From U. Amhearst:
3654.
Stone, Harlan Fiske. S. of Fred L. and Ann S. (Butler), b. Chesterfield, N.
H., O. 11, 1872. LL. B., Columbia, 1898; M. A., A. C., 1900; LL. D., A. C.,
1913; Yale, 1924; Columbia, 1925; Williams, 1925. Phi Beta Kappa; Alpha
Delta Phi.
Prepared Amherst H. S.; B. S. Submaster Newburgh (N. Y.) H. S., 1894-95;
instructor in history Adelphi Acad., Brooklyn, N. Y., 1895-96; Columbia L.
S., 1895-98; admitted to N. Y. bar, 1898; lawyer N. Y. City, 1898-; member
of firm Satterlee, Sullivan & Stone; later member of firm Sullivan &
Cromwell; lecturer on law Columbia L. S., 1899-1902; prof., 1902-05; dean,
1910-23. U. S. Attorney General, 1924-25; Associate Justice U. S. Supreme
Court, 1925-. Director Atlanta & Charlotte Air Line R. R. Co. President
Assoc. Amer. Law Schools; member Amer. Bar Assoc. Wrote for legal
publications.
Married S. 8, 1899, Agnes E. Harvey, Chesterfield, N. H. Ch. Marshall H.;
Lauson H. (Portrait in possession of A. C.)
Address, 2400 16th St., Washington, D. C.
HARLAN FISKE STONE: NEW DEAL PRUDENCE
by Theodore M. Vestal
In
late April, 1946, Washington, D.C., was an upbeat, optimistic city. World War II
finally was over, and the stresses of what would be called the Cold War were not
yet at hand. The U.S. Supreme Court was nearing the end of its first post war
term in the always spectacular springtime of the federal district.
Monday, April 22nd, was a decision day at the Court, and the Chief
Justice was in a good mood. He had spent Easter weekend with family and friends,
and he had plans to host a dinner party that evening. After the customary call
to order at twelve noon in the marble colonaded chamber, the Justices took their
seats at the long, elevated mahogany bench. In the center of the Roosevelt Court
sat the imposing twelfth Chief Justice of the United States, Harlan Fiske Stone,
looking every inch the New England patrician that he was. After some routine
business was concluded, the Justices read opinions of the Court or their
dissenting opinions. Stone read his dissent from a case involving a
conscientious objector's right to citizenship and concluded by saying, "It is
not the function of this Court to disregard the will of Congress in the exercise
of its constitutional power."1
A few minutes later when it was time for the Chief to deliver
three opinions he had prepared for the Court, there was silence. Senior
Associate Justice Hugo Black, sensing something was wrong, gaveled the session
to adjournment, and he and Justice Stanley Reed assisted the Chief Justice from
the chamber. The unconscious Chief was taken to a hospital where in the early
evening he died, apparently without pain, of a massive cerebral hemorrhage.2
Stone's final act literally had been on the bench and his last coherent words
were a refrain of his often voiced philosophy of judicial restraint. Thus ended
the life of a Justice whose service on the Court spanned the Lochner
era to the age of the welfare state, a Justice whose opinions had a profound
impact on the nation's struggle to meet the challenges of the Great Depression
and a world war and who guided the Court into the beginning of the judicial
revolution in civil liberties and civil rights. For the Supreme Court in 1946,
April was the cruelist month.
As Chief Justice, Harlan Fiske Stone was sui generis.
He was the only university professor and law school dean to head the Court, and
he was the only Chief Justice to serve under two predecessors. In the history of
the Court, Stone alone sat in all the high backed chairs of the Court from the
junior Associate Justice's place to the Chief's center spot. He was the first
Court nominee to submit to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee during
the confirmation process. Tragically, Stone had the briefest tenure as Chief
Justice since 1801. He was one of only two Chief Justices appointed by a
President of a different political party (the other was Democrat E. Douglas
White appointed by Taft), and he was one of three Chiefs who were "promoted"
directly from the position of Associate Justice (the others were White and
William H. Rehnquist; Charles Evans Hughes also had been an Associate Justice,
but he resigned from the Court to run for the presidency several years before
his appointment as Chief Justice).
Harlan Fiske Stone was born on October 11, 1872, at his family's
farm in Chesterfield, New Hampshire. His parents were Frederick Lauson Stone and
Anne Butler, a former schoolteacher. Two years after Harlan's birth, the Stones
moved to Mill Valley, near Amherst, Massachusetts. In addition to farming, Fred
Stone supported his family by a variety of small business ventures. Harlan's
childhood was that of a typical, hard working New England farm boy. In later
years, Harlan attributed his independence, self reliance, and sense of civic
responsibility to his New England upbringing. He did not want to continue in his
father's footsteps as a farmer, however, and after his sophomore year of high
school, he attended the nearby Massachusetts Agricultural College (M.A.C., now
the University of Massachusetts), intending to study science and possibly become
a physician. In his second year, an untoward scuffle with an instructor in the
college's compulsory chapel service led to Stone's expulsion.
M.A.C.'s loss was cross town Amherst's gain. In 1890 Stone was
accepted at Amherst College, where he excelled in academics (Phi Beta Kappa) and
oratory, served as editor of the college newspaper, was three times elected
class president, and played on the football team. "Doc," as Stone was known in
college, graduated in 1894 and taught high school science for a year at
Newburyport, Massachusetts. There he met district attorney William H. Moody, a
future Supreme Court Justice, who encouraged Stone to study law. In Newburyport,
Stone frequently sat in on sessions of the state superior court and decided to
pursue legal studies.
In 1895, he was admitted to Columbia Law School, where the case
system of instruction had just been introduced. In New York City, Stone helped
pay his way through law school by teaching history part time at a Brooklyn high
school. Stone received his L.L.B. degree in 1898 and was admitted to the New
York Bar. He clerked one year for Sullivan and Cromwell, a Wall Street law firm.
In 1899, Stone married Agnes Harvey, a childhood sweetheart. He
joined the firm of Wilmer and Canfield and began part time teaching of equity
and trusts at Columbia. In 1903 he was promoted to adjunct professor, with a
seat in Columbia's Faculty of Law. Stone resigned his professorship in 1905,
however, because of an inadequate salary and his disagreements with Columbia's
president, Nicholas Murray Butler. He then became a full partner in the firm now
called Wilmer, Canfield, and Stone.
Five years later, without relinquishing his work in the law firm,
Stone was lured back to Columbia where he was Professor of Law and Dean of the
Law School. In 1915 he was named Kent Professor of Law, and his professorial
accomplishments included writing several significant articles on trusts and
equity rights for the Columbia Law Review. He was a gifted teacher
reputed to be inspiring and effective in the classroom. One of his students was
William O. Douglas, who later would serve on the Supreme Court with Stone. Under
Stone's leadership, the law school upgraded its admission requirements and set
high standards of scholarship for the faculty. During World War I, Stone served
on a government board examining claims of conscientious objectors, and he
subsequently wrote "The Conscientious Objector," a classic essay in defense of
nonconformism.3 During this time, he also defended free speech claims
of professors and socialists and opposed the "red raids" of U.S. Attorney
General A. Mitchell Palmer against suspected radicals. Columbia soon became a
center of a new school of jurisprudence, legal realism. Legal realists rejected
formalism and static legal rules; instead, they searched for the experiential
and the role of human idiosyncracy in the development of law. Although Dean
Stone encouraged the realists, he was condemned by President Butler as an
intellectual conservative who had let legal education at Columbia fall "into the
ruts."4
In 1923, disgusted by his conflict with Butler and bored with
"all the petty details of law school administration" that he dubbed "administrivia,"
Stone resigned the deanship and joined the prestigious Wall Street firm of
Sullivan and Cromwell.5 He received a much higher salary and headed
the firm's litigation department that had a large corporation and estate
practice (including J.P. Morgan's interests). In full time private practice for
only a brief time, Stone was considered a "hard working, solid sort of person,
willing on occasion to champion the rights of mankind, but safe nevertheless."6
On 1 April 1924, Stone became Attorney General of the United
States, appointed by President Calvin Coolidge, who had been a contemporary of
Stone's at Amherst. Coolidge needed someone who would be perceived by the public
as beyond reproach to oversee investigations into various scandals arising under
the Harding administration. These scandals had besmirched Harding's Attorney
General, Harry M. Dougherty, and forced his resignation. Stone immediately fired
Dougherty's cronies in the Department of Justice and replaced them with men of
integrity. He appointed a young lawyer, J. Edgar Hoover, as Director of a
reconstituted Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and directed him to model
the FBI on Scotland Yard and make it far more efficient than any other police
organization in the country. A pro active Attorney General, Stone argued many of
his department's cases in the federal courts and launched an anti trust
investigation of the Aluminum Company of America, controlled by the family of
Andrew Mellon, who was Coolidge's Secretary of the Treasury.
In the 1924 presidential election, Stone campaigned for Coolidge's re
election. He especially opposed the Progressive Party's candidate, Robert M.
LaFollette, who had proposed that Congress be empowered to reenact any law that
the Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional. Stone found this idea
threatening to the integrity of the judiciary as well as the separation of
powers.
Shortly after the election, Justice Joseph McKenna resigned from the
Supreme Court, and on 5 January 1925, Coolidge nominated Stone to replace him.
His nomination was greeted with general approval, although there were rumors
that Stone might have been kicked upstairs because of his antitrust activities.
Some Senators raised questions about Stone's connection to Wall Street making
him a tool of corporate interests. To quiet those fears, Stone proposed that he
answer questions of the Senate Judiciary Committee in person. Stone made such a
favorable impression upon the Senators that he was confirmed by a vote of 71 to
6. On March 2nd, 1925, Stone took the oath as Associate Justice administered by
Chief Justice William Howard Taft.
The Supreme Court of the mid 1920s was primarily concerned with the
relationships of business and government. A majority of the justices led by Taft
were staunch defenders of business and capitalism from most government
regulation. The Court utilized the doctrines of substantive due process and the
new fundamental right of "liberty of contract" to oversee attempts at regulation
by the national and state governments. Critics of the Court charged that the
judiciary had usurped legislative authority and had embodied a particular
economic theory, laissez faire, into its decisions. Despise the fears of
progressives, Stone quickly joined the Court's "liberal faction," frequently
dissenting with Justices Holmes and Brandeis and later, Cardozo when he took
Holmes' seat, from the majority's narrow view of the police powers of the state.
The "liberal" justices called for judicial restraint, deference to the
legislative will.
In his jurisprudence, Stone searched not for a fixed point of law
but for guiding principles. He was willing to look at nontraditional sources for
information related to the legal rules the Court pronounced a process advocated
by legal realists. Stone wrote few opinions involving constitutional questions;
instead he was assigned tort cases, admiralty causes, patent disputes, and
income tax controversies. Because the Supreme Court did not have its own
building at that time, Stone did much of his work at home or in a basement room
of the Senate Office Building.
During the Hoover administration, Stone served as an informal
advisor to the President and was a member of Hoover's pre breakfast "Medicine
Ball Cabinet," a fitness group, at the White House. Hoover unsuccessfully tried
to persuade Stone to become his Secretary of State following the 1928
presidential election.
When Chief Justice Taft resigned because of failing health in 1930,
however, Stone was rumored to be Hoover's choice to replace him. Hoover, perhaps
to pay off a political debt for help in the 1928 election, instead appointed
former Associate Justice and Stone's colleague in the Coolidge cabinet, Charles
Evans Hughes, to the post. Hughes, a judicial moderate, lead the Court during
the tumultuous times of the Great Depression and the Roosevelt administration's
efforts to combat it.
A conservative bloc composed of Justices Butler, McReynolds,
Sutherland, and Van Devanter, known as "the four horsemen" (of the Apocalypse),
frequently joined by Owen Roberts and sometimes Hughes, dominated the Court and
blocked government efforts to deal with the Depression. Stone continued in his
role as a dissenter to the substantive due process activists who read their
personal economic predilections into the Constitution. Feeling isolated on the
Court, Stone considered returning to law practice in New York, a move encouraged
by his Sullivan and Cromwell colleague, John Foster Dulles.7 After
Hoover's defeat in the 1932 elections, Stone's admirers urged him to enter
politics and seek the GOP presidential nomination. Stone, however, heeded the
advice of Judge Learned Hand and remained on the Court and emerged as the chief
opponent of judicial conservatism.
During the 1930s the four horsemen and their sometime converts
consistently attacked New Deal legislation because they disagreed with its
wisdom. Using a Catch 22 logic, the conservative bloc found states could not
regulate much because of Congress' commerce power, and Congress could not
regulate much because of the states' police power. In contrast, Stone upheld
government regulations, voting for the abrogation of the gold clause contract in
government bonds, the TVA, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Wage and
Hour Law; and he dissented from decisions on the Guffey coal wage bill and on
the New York Minimum Wage Law for women. When the conservatives struck down
FDR's Agricultural Administration Act in 1936 in United States v. Butler,
Stone dissented, charging the majority with writing its own views into law,
disregarding the wisdom of the legislature, and "torturing" the Constitution.
Wrote Stone: "While unconstitutional exercise of power by the executive or
legislative branches of the Government is subject to judicial restraint, the
only check upon our own exercise of power is our own sense of restraint."8
Stone's constitutional interpretation respecting government
regulation of the economy was based on the premise that the Constitution
sanctioned government power to govern and that power changed to meet changing
conditions. Further, it was not for the courts to determine what remedies were
appropriate to meet economic problems that burdened the nation. The essential
continuity, according to Stone, was not that of "rules" but of "aims and
ideals," allowing government "to continue to function and to perform its
appointed tasks within the bounds of reasonableness." Stone contended that
judges must be alert to discover whether their decisions "will represent the
sober second thought of the community, which is the firm base on which all law
must ultimately rest."9
Stone opposed Roosevelt's Court packing plan during the
constitutional crisis of 1937, although he could well understand why the
President suggested such a measure. Following the "switch in time," primarily by
Justice Roberts, and retirements of other justices, Stone's views formerly
raised in dissent became those of the Court's majority. New Deal regulatory
measures were sustained and wide ranging federal power over the economy was
upheld. Stone wrote significant opinions about intergovernmental tax immunities,
commerce clause restrictions on the states, equity, and patents.
One of Stone's greatest contributions to American jurisprudence came
in his majority opinion in United States v. Carolene Products (1938),
which included the most famous footnote in the Court's history.10 In
an otherwise insignificant case, Stone's footnote laid out a new direction for
the Court's use of judicial review and the choice between activism and
restraint. He suggested that although economic legislation might be assumed to
be constitutional if it was rational, such a test might not apply to other types
of legislation. There might be a narrower scope for the presumption of
constitutionality if the legislation appeared to violate protections of the Bill
of Rights. In addition, legislation restricting political processes should be
subjected to more exacting judicial scrutiny, and the courts might have a
special responsibility for protecting "discrete and insular minorities," such as
religious, national, or racial minorities, particularly when political processes
relied upon to protect minorities have been curtailed. With the Carolene
Products footnote, the Court that had been primarily occupied with the
business government relationship became more concerned with the relationship
between the individual and government. Much of the subsequent doctrinal and
theoretical development of constitutional law in the United States was
foreshadowed by Footnote Four, and the protection of civil liberties and civil
rights became the main business of the Court.
Stone soon had the opportunity to apply his Footnote Four theories
in his opinions. In Hague v. CIO (1939), Stone made clear that the
safeguards of the First Amendment applied to the states and were firmly anchored
in the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause. Moreover, the Court would
henceforth subject legislation restricting civil liberties to "more exacting
judicial scrutiny."11 Stone echoed this sentiment as the sole
dissenter in Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940),
where the majority had upheld a state law requiring public school children to
salute the flag against a challenge from Jehovah's Witnesses that this violated
their religious scruples. Stone found the law violative of the guarantee of
"freedom of mind and spirit." For Stone it was incumbent upon the Court to
extend freedom's benefits to the novel, the unpopular, the unorthodoxeven "in
times when the nation is subject to extraordinary stress."12 Within a
few years, Stone's ideas were endorsed by a majority of the Court when it
reversed the Gobitis decision in West Virginia State Board of
Education v. Barnette (1943).
On 2 June 1941, Chief Justice Hughes retired, and President
Roosevelt, in a gesture of national unity as war approached, nominated Stone, a
staunch Republican, to fill the vacancy. His appointment was approved strongly
by the public and the press, and the Senate unanimously confirmed Stone by a
voice vote. The Court over which he presided, with the exception of Roberts, was
composed of Roosevelt appointed New Deal liberals who might have been expected
to share Stone's views on judicial restraint.
However, as the Court moved away from issues of federalism and
economic regulation and focused on civil liberties questions, the new men on the
Court who called themselves "liberals" differed markedly over what that title
meant. The Justices increasingly divided into shifting majority and minority
voting blocks. Internecine wrangling between strong willed, prickly
personalities especially Black, Douglas, Frankfurter, and Jackson as well as
substantive disagreement on issues characterized the Court's work. Quarrels that
formerly had been kept secret in conference erupted into formal opinions. Even
the writing of what should have been a routine retirement letter to Justice
Roberts became a public squabble among the justices. The Chief Justice, who
tended to minimize his role as leader, was criticized for failing to keep
differences under control and to "mass the Court" as Hughes and Taft had done.
Stone's style of leadership doubtlessly contributed to the increase
in strident dissents and public backbiting among the justices. Unlike Hughes,
who dominated the Court's conferences with an iron will, Stone preferred to
preside over a chief moderated "university seminar" that emphasized deliberation
and free wheeling discussion. Although Douglas wrote that "Stone's tolerance of
full and free discussions produced a most healthy environment for judicial
work," the justices' continuous disagreement on vital issues threatened the
Court's authority and prestige.13
Despite the dissonance, the Roosevelt Court was productive and
creative. In settling some of the most controversial issues facing the nation,
the Court handed down a series of landmark cases expanding individual rights,
recasting the role of the national government in the federal system, meeting the
challenges of World War II, encouraging the rights of organized labor, and using
the Equal Protection Clause to protect racial minorities. Stone shouldered his
part of the work, and during his five years as chief, he wrote 145 opinions
(more per term than any of the other justices), 96 of which were for the Court.
The Chief frequently disagreed with his colleagues who were activists in using
judicial power to protect individual liberties from legislative interference.
Stone still believed in judicial restraint and objected to the justices trying
to write their own liberal social views into law. Stone's insistence that the
justices should be controlled by an informed sense of judicial self restraint
was just as applicable to the new liberal Court as it had been to the old
conservative Court. He also protested against the justices’ use of a "preferred
freedoms" doctrine to invalidate any legislation affecting First Amendment
rights.
The Chief wrote for the Court in many of the most difficult and
perplexing cases. In United States v. Classic (1941), he ruled
that Congress could regulate a primary election if it constituted part of the
overall machinery for choosing elected federal officials a significant victory
for African American voters who had been disenfranchised in "white primaries" in
the segregated South. When war powers of the executive and Congress clashed with
civil liberties during World War II, however, Stone frequently upheld the
government. His most controversial decisions involved constitutionally
unprecedented cases involving German saboteurs, Ex parte Quirin
(1942); the war crimes trial of Japanese General Yamashita, In re Yamashita
(1946); and the imposition of a curfew on Japanese Americans and their exclusion
from the west coast, Hirabayashi v. United States (1943). Stone
reasoned that the Constitution committed war making to Congress and the
President, and that if that power was reasonably exercised, the justices should
construe it with full cognizance of its special characteristics. In war, as in
peace, according to the Chief Justice, the Constitution was a flexible
instrument of government that both granted and limited power. It was the
difficult task of the Court to balance power and individual liberties to achieve
a delicate equilibrium to preserve the related values of the public good and
private rights.14 The Chief's coming down on the side of public good
in the guise of military commanders disappointed his more libertarian admirers.
Stone's career on the Court extend over a transition from a time
when judicial values emphasized property rights and dual federalism to the
modern era that stresses "the free play of the human spirit"15 and an
expanded national power. Cast as a liberal on the old Court, Stone truly was an
independent thinking pragmatist who sought balance in all aspects of life. As
the justices of the new Court increasingly championed the judiciary's role as
the palladium of the people's freedom, Stone's views became a restraining
influence on their activism. His voice was one of prudence for the New Deal. He
sought to temper predilection with restraint and carefully crafted opinions. For
Stone, a personal preference for a particular policy was but one factor in his
quest for judgment. He believed law was an evolutionary process, changing, as
did the common law, in an orderly manner. Thus he preferred narrow holdings
making incremental advances as the best way to accommodate change.16
While the attitudes of the justices shifted around him, Stone's stayed in place
"like a block of New England granite."17
As an individual justice Stone made dynamic
contributions to American law, adapting the Court and Constitution to the
problems of the twentieth century. Although critics found him disappointing as a
Chief Justice, Stone, the "judge's judge," exerted a profound influence on the
course of events. At its best, the legacy he left was the pillar of our
constitutional law.
NOTES
1. Girouard v. United States, 328 U.S. 61 (1946): dissenting, p.
70.
2. Alpheus Thomas Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law
(New York: Viking Press, 1956), p. 806.
3. Harlan Fiske Stone, "The Conscientious Objector," Columbia
University Quarterly, October 1919.
4. Melvin I. Urofsky, "Stone, Harlan Fiske," in American National
Biography, Volume 20, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 850.
5. Melvin I. Urofsky, Division and Discord: The Supreme Court under Stone
and Vinson, 1941 1953 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina
Press, 1997), p. 10.
6. "Stone, Harlan Fiske," Current Biography: Who's News and Why, 1941,
ed. Maxine Block (New York: H.W. Wilson, 1941), p, 836.
7. Mason, p. 347.
8. United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 (1936); dissenting p. 78.
9. Harlan Fiske Stone, "The Common Law in the United States," an address
delivered at the Harvard Tercentenary celebration, 1936. Qtd. in Mason, p. 434.
10. 304 U.S. 144 (1938).
11. 307 U.S. 496 (1939); concurring, p. 518.
12. 310 U.S. 586 (1940); dissenting, p. 601.
13. Robert J. Steamer, Chief Justice: Leadership and the Supreme Court
(Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1986), p. 265 266.
14. Mason, p. 683.
15. Felix Frankfurter, Qtd. in Robert G. McCloskey, The American
Supreme Court (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 181.
16. G. Edward White, The American Judicial Tradition: Profiles of
Leading American Judges (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 218
219.
17. Wesley McCune, The Nine Young Men, p. 249, Qtd in Mason, p.
780.
FOR FURTHER READING
Mason, Alpheus Thomas. Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law. New York:
Viking Press, 1956.
Pritchett, C. Herman. The Roosevelt Court: A Study in Judicial Politics and
Values. New York: Macmillan, 1948.
Steamer, Robert J. Chief Justice: Leadership and the Supreme Court.
Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1986.
Urofsky, Melvin I. Division and Discord: The Supreme Court under Stone and
Vinson,
1941 1953. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1997.
Wechsler, Herbert. "Mr. Justice Stone and the Constitution." Columbia Law
Review 46 (1946):
764 800.
White, G. Edward. The American Judicial Tradition: Profiles of Leading
American Judges. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Theodore M. Vestal (Ph.D., Stanford) is Professor Political Science at Oklahoma
State University, where he teaches courses on public law. He is the author of
Ethiopia: A Post Cold War African State and International
Education: Its History and Promise for Today.
HARLAN FISKE STONE: NEW DEAL PRUDENCE
by Theodore M. Vestal
In
late April, 1946, Washington, D.C., was an upbeat, optimistic city. World War II
finally was over, and the stresses of what would be called the Cold War were not
yet at hand. The U.S. Supreme Court was nearing the end of its first post war
term in the always spectacular springtime of the federal district.
Monday, April 22nd, was a decision day at the Court, and the Chief
Justice was in a good mood. He had spent Easter weekend with family and friends,
and he had plans to host a dinner party that evening. After the customary call
to order at twelve noon in the marble colonaded chamber, the Justices took their
seats at the long, elevated mahogany bench. In the center of the Roosevelt Court
sat the imposing twelfth Chief Justice of the United States, Harlan Fiske Stone,
looking every inch the New England patrician that he was. After some routine
business was concluded, the Justices read opinions of the Court or their
dissenting opinions. Stone read his dissent from a case involving a
conscientious objector's right to citizenship and concluded by saying, "It is
not the function of this Court to disregard the will of Congress in the exercise
of its constitutional power."1
A few minutes later when it was time for the Chief to deliver
three opinions he had prepared for the Court, there was silence. Senior
Associate Justice Hugo Black, sensing something was wrong, gaveled the session
to adjournment, and he and Justice Stanley Reed assisted the Chief Justice from
the chamber. The unconscious Chief was taken to a hospital where in the early
evening he died, apparently without pain, of a massive cerebral hemorrhage.2
Stone's final act literally had been on the bench and his last coherent words
were a refrain of his often voiced philosophy of judicial restraint. Thus ended
the life of a Justice whose service on the Court spanned the Lochner
era to the age of the welfare state, a Justice whose opinions had a profound
impact on the nation's struggle to meet the challenges of the Great Depression
and a world war and who guided the Court into the beginning of the judicial
revolution in civil liberties and civil rights. For the Supreme Court in 1946,
April was the cruelist month.
As Chief Justice, Harlan Fiske Stone was sui generis.
He was the only university professor and law school dean to head the Court, and
he was the only Chief Justice to serve under two predecessors. In the history of
the Court, Stone alone sat in all the high backed chairs of the Court from the
junior Associate Justice's place to the Chief's center spot. He was the first
Court nominee to submit to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee during
the confirmation process. Tragically, Stone had the briefest tenure as Chief
Justice since 1801. He was one of only two Chief Justices appointed by a
President of a different political party (the other was Democrat E. Douglas
White appointed by Taft), and he was one of three Chiefs who were "promoted"
directly from the position of Associate Justice (the others were White and
William H. Rehnquist; Charles Evans Hughes also had been an Associate Justice,
but he resigned from the Court to run for the presidency several years before
his appointment as Chief Justice).
Harlan Fiske Stone was born on October 11, 1872, at his family's
farm in Chesterfield, New Hampshire. His parents were Frederick Lauson Stone and
Anne Butler, a former schoolteacher. Two years after Harlan's birth, the Stones
moved to Mill Valley, near Amherst, Massachusetts. In addition to farming, Fred
Stone supported his family by a variety of small business ventures. Harlan's
childhood was that of a typical, hard working New England farm boy. In later
years, Harlan attributed his independence, self reliance, and sense of civic
responsibility to his New England upbringing. He did not want to continue in his
father's footsteps as a farmer, however, and after his sophomore year of high
school, he attended the nearby Massachusetts Agricultural College (M.A.C., now
the University of Massachusetts), intending to study science and possibly become
a physician. In his second year, an untoward scuffle with an instructor in the
college's compulsory chapel service led to Stone's expulsion.
M.A.C.'s loss was cross town Amherst's gain. In 1890 Stone was
accepted at Amherst College, where he excelled in academics (Phi Beta Kappa) and
oratory, served as editor of the college newspaper, was three times elected
class president, and played on the football team. "Doc," as Stone was known in
college, graduated in 1894 and taught high school science for a year at
Newburyport, Massachusetts. There he met district attorney William H. Moody, a
future Supreme Court Justice, who encouraged Stone to study law. In Newburyport,
Stone frequently sat in on sessions of the state superior court and decided to
pursue legal studies.
In 1895, he was admitted to Columbia Law School, where the case
system of instruction had just been introduced. In New York City, Stone helped
pay his way through law school by teaching history part time at a Brooklyn high
school. Stone received his L.L.B. degree in 1898 and was admitted to the New
York Bar. He clerked one year for Sullivan and Cromwell, a Wall Street law firm.
In 1899, Stone married Agnes Harvey, a childhood sweetheart. He
joined the firm of Wilmer and Canfield and began part time teaching of equity
and trusts at Columbia. In 1903 he was promoted to adjunct professor, with a
seat in Columbia's Faculty of Law. Stone resigned his professorship in 1905,
however, because of an inadequate salary and his disagreements with Columbia's
president, Nicholas Murray Butler. He then became a full partner in the firm now
called Wilmer, Canfield, and Stone.
Five years later, without relinquishing his work in the law firm,
Stone was lured back to Columbia where he was Professor of Law and Dean of the
Law School. In 1915 he was named Kent Professor of Law, and his professorial
accomplishments included writing several significant articles on trusts and
equity rights for the Columbia Law Review. He was a gifted teacher
reputed to be inspiring and effective in the classroom. One of his students was
William O. Douglas, who later would serve on the Supreme Court with Stone. Under
Stone's leadership, the law school upgraded its admission requirements and set
high standards of scholarship for the faculty. During World War I, Stone served
on a government board examining claims of conscientious objectors, and he
subsequently wrote "The Conscientious Objector," a classic essay in defense of
nonconformism.3 During this time, he also defended free speech claims
of professors and socialists and opposed the "red raids" of U.S. Attorney
General A. Mitchell Palmer against suspected radicals. Columbia soon became a
center of a new school of jurisprudence, legal realism. Legal realists rejected
formalism and static legal rules; instead, they searched for the experiential
and the role of human idiosyncracy in the development of law. Although Dean
Stone encouraged the realists, he was condemned by President Butler as an
intellectual conservative who had let legal education at Columbia fall "into the
ruts."4
In 1923, disgusted by his conflict with Butler and bored with
"all the petty details of law school administration" that he dubbed "administrivia,"
Stone resigned the deanship and joined the prestigious Wall Street firm of
Sullivan and Cromwell.5 He received a much higher salary and headed
the firm's litigation department that had a large corporation and estate
practice (including J.P. Morgan's interests). In full time private practice for
only a brief time, Stone was considered a "hard working, solid sort of person,
willing on occasion to champion the rights of mankind, but safe nevertheless."6
On 1 April 1924, Stone became Attorney General of the United
States, appointed by President Calvin Coolidge, who had been a contemporary of
Stone's at Amherst. Coolidge needed someone who would be perceived by the public
as beyond reproach to oversee investigations into various scandals arising under
the Harding administration. These scandals had besmirched Harding's Attorney
General, Harry M. Dougherty, and forced his resignation. Stone immediately fired
Dougherty's cronies in the Department of Justice and replaced them with men of
integrity. He appointed a young lawyer, J. Edgar Hoover, as Director of a
reconstituted Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and directed him to model
the FBI on Scotland Yard and make it far more efficient than any other police
organization in the country. A pro active Attorney General, Stone argued many of
his department's cases in the federal courts and launched an anti trust
investigation of the Aluminum Company of America, controlled by the family of
Andrew Mellon, who was Coolidge's Secretary of the Treasury.
In the 1924 presidential election, Stone campaigned for Coolidge's re
election. He especially opposed the Progressive Party's candidate, Robert M.
LaFollette, who had proposed that Congress be empowered to reenact any law that
the Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional. Stone found this idea
threatening to the integrity of the judiciary as well as the separation of
powers.
Shortly after the election, Justice Joseph McKenna resigned from the
Supreme Court, and on 5 January 1925, Coolidge nominated Stone to replace him.
His nomination was greeted with general approval, although there were rumors
that Stone might have been kicked upstairs because of his antitrust activities.
Some Senators raised questions about Stone's connection to Wall Street making
him a tool of corporate interests. To quiet those fears, Stone proposed that he
answer questions of the Senate Judiciary Committee in person. Stone made such a
favorable impression upon the Senators that he was confirmed by a vote of 71 to
6. On March 2nd, 1925, Stone took the oath as Associate Justice administered by
Chief Justice William Howard Taft.
The Supreme Court of the mid 1920s was primarily concerned with the
relationships of business and government. A majority of the justices led by Taft
were staunch defenders of business and capitalism from most government
regulation. The Court utilized the doctrines of substantive due process and the
new fundamental right of "liberty of contract" to oversee attempts at regulation
by the national and state governments. Critics of the Court charged that the
judiciary had usurped legislative authority and had embodied a particular
economic theory, laissez faire, into its decisions. Despise the fears of
progressives, Stone quickly joined the Court's "liberal faction," frequently
dissenting with Justices Holmes and Brandeis and later, Cardozo when he took
Holmes' seat, from the majority's narrow view of the police powers of the state.
The "liberal" justices called for judicial restraint, deference to the
legislative will.
In his jurisprudence, Stone searched not for a fixed point of law
but for guiding principles. He was willing to look at nontraditional sources for
information related to the legal rules the Court pronounced a process advocated
by legal realists. Stone wrote few opinions involving constitutional questions;
instead he was assigned tort cases, admiralty causes, patent disputes, and
income tax controversies. Because the Supreme Court did not have its own
building at that time, Stone did much of his work at home or in a basement room
of the Senate Office Building.
During the Hoover administration, Stone served as an informal
advisor to the President and was a member of Hoover's pre breakfast "Medicine
Ball Cabinet," a fitness group, at the White House. Hoover unsuccessfully tried
to persuade Stone to become his Secretary of State following the 1928
presidential election.
When Chief Justice Taft resigned because of failing health in 1930,
however, Stone was rumored to be Hoover's choice to replace him. Hoover, perhaps
to pay off a political debt for help in the 1928 election, instead appointed
former Associate Justice and Stone's colleague in the Coolidge cabinet, Charles
Evans Hughes, to the post. Hughes, a judicial moderate, lead the Court during
the tumultuous times of the Great Depression and the Roosevelt administration's
efforts to combat it.
A conservative bloc composed of Justices Butler, McReynolds,
Sutherland, and Van Devanter, known as "the four horsemen" (of the Apocalypse),
frequently joined by Owen Roberts and sometimes Hughes, dominated the Court and
blocked government efforts to deal with the Depression. Stone continued in his
role as a dissenter to the substantive due process activists who read their
personal economic predilections into the Constitution. Feeling isolated on the
Court, Stone considered returning to law practice in New York, a move encouraged
by his Sullivan and Cromwell colleague, John Foster Dulles.7 After
Hoover's defeat in the 1932 elections, Stone's admirers urged him to enter
politics and seek the GOP presidential nomination. Stone, however, heeded the
advice of Judge Learned Hand and remained on the Court and emerged as the chief
opponent of judicial conservatism.
During the 1930s the four horsemen and their sometime converts
consistently attacked New Deal legislation because they disagreed with its
wisdom. Using a Catch 22 logic, the conservative bloc found states could not
regulate much because of Congress' commerce power, and Congress could not
regulate much because of the states' police power. In contrast, Stone upheld
government regulations, voting for the abrogation of the gold clause contract in
government bonds, the TVA, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Wage and
Hour Law; and he dissented from decisions on the Guffey coal wage bill and on
the New York Minimum Wage Law for women. When the conservatives struck down
FDR's Agricultural Administration Act in 1936 in United States v. Butler,
Stone dissented, charging the majority with writing its own views into law,
disregarding the wisdom of the legislature, and "torturing" the Constitution.
Wrote Stone: "While unconstitutional exercise of power by the executive or
legislative branches of the Government is subject to judicial restraint, the
only check upon our own exercise of power is our own sense of restraint."8
Stone's constitutional interpretation respecting government
regulation of the economy was based on the premise that the Constitution
sanctioned government power to govern and that power changed to meet changing
conditions. Further, it was not for the courts to determine what remedies were
appropriate to meet economic problems that burdened the nation. The essential
continuity, according to Stone, was not that of "rules" but of "aims and
ideals," allowing government "to continue to function and to perform its
appointed tasks within the bounds of reasonableness." Stone contended that
judges must be alert to discover whether their decisions "will represent the
sober second thought of the community, which is the firm base on which all law
must ultimately rest."9
Stone opposed Roosevelt's Court packing plan during the
constitutional crisis of 1937, although he could well understand why the
President suggested such a measure. Following the "switch in time," primarily by
Justice Roberts, and retirements of other justices, Stone's views formerly
raised in dissent became those of the Court's majority. New Deal regulatory
measures were sustained and wide ranging federal power over the economy was
upheld. Stone wrote significant opinions about intergovernmental tax immunities,
commerce clause restrictions on the states, equity, and patents.
One of Stone's greatest contributions to American jurisprudence came
in his majority opinion in United States v. Carolene Products (1938),
which included the most famous footnote in the Court's history.10 In
an otherwise insignificant case, Stone's footnote laid out a new direction for
the Court's use of judicial review and the choice between activism and
restraint. He suggested that although economic legislation might be assumed to
be constitutional if it was rational, such a test might not apply to other types
of legislation. There might be a narrower scope for the presumption of
constitutionality if the legislation appeared to violate protections of the Bill
of Rights. In addition, legislation restricting political processes should be
subjected to more exacting judicial scrutiny, and the courts might have a
special responsibility for protecting "discrete and insular minorities," such as
religious, national, or racial minorities, particularly when political processes
relied upon to protect minorities have been curtailed. With the Carolene
Products footnote, the Court that had been primarily occupied with the
business government relationship became more concerned with the relationship
between the individual and government. Much of the subsequent doctrinal and
theoretical development of constitutional law in the United States was
foreshadowed by Footnote Four, and the protection of civil liberties and civil
rights became the main business of the Court.
Stone soon had the opportunity to apply his Footnote Four theories
in his opinions. In Hague v. CIO (1939), Stone made clear that the
safeguards of the First Amendment applied to the states and were firmly anchored
in the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause. Moreover, the Court would
henceforth subject legislation restricting civil liberties to "more exacting
judicial scrutiny."11 Stone echoed this sentiment as the sole
dissenter in Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940),
where the majority had upheld a state law requiring public school children to
salute the flag against a challenge from Jehovah's Witnesses that this violated
their religious scruples. Stone found the law violative of the guarantee of
"freedom of mind and spirit." For Stone it was incumbent upon the Court to
extend freedom's benefits to the novel, the unpopular, the unorthodoxeven "in
times when the nation is subject to extraordinary stress."12 Within a
few years, Stone's ideas were endorsed by a majority of the Court when it
reversed the Gobitis decision in West Virginia State Board of
Education v. Barnette (1943).
On 2 June 1941, Chief Justice Hughes retired, and President
Roosevelt, in a gesture of national unity as war approached, nominated Stone, a
staunch Republican, to fill the vacancy. His appointment was approved strongly
by the public and the press, and the Senate unanimously confirmed Stone by a
voice vote. The Court over which he presided, with the exception of Roberts, was
composed of Roosevelt appointed New Deal liberals who might have been expected
to share Stone's views on judicial restraint.
However, as the Court moved away from issues of federalism and
economic regulation and focused on civil liberties questions, the new men on the
Court who called themselves "liberals" differed markedly over what that title
meant. The Justices increasingly divided into shifting majority and minority
voting blocks. Internecine wrangling between strong willed, prickly
personalities especially Black, Douglas, Frankfurter, and Jackson as well as
substantive disagreement on issues characterized the Court's work. Quarrels that
formerly had been kept secret in conference erupted into formal opinions. Even
the writing of what should have been a routine retirement letter to Justice
Roberts became a public squabble among the justices. The Chief Justice, who
tended to minimize his role as leader, was criticized for failing to keep
differences under control and to "mass the Court" as Hughes and Taft had done.
Stone's style of leadership doubtlessly contributed to the increase
in strident dissents and public backbiting among the justices. Unlike Hughes,
who dominated the Court's conferences with an iron will, Stone preferred to
preside over a chief moderated "university seminar" that emphasized deliberation
and free wheeling discussion. Although Douglas wrote that "Stone's tolerance of
full and free discussions produced a most healthy environment for judicial
work," the justices' continuous disagreement on vital issues threatened the
Court's authority and prestige.13
Despite the dissonance, the Roosevelt Court was productive and
creative. In settling some of the most controversial issues facing the nation,
the Court handed down a series of landmark cases expanding individual rights,
recasting the role of the national government in the federal system, meeting the
challenges of World War II, encouraging the rights of organized labor, and using
the Equal Protection Clause to protect racial minorities. Stone shouldered his
part of the work, and during his five years as chief, he wrote 145 opinions
(more per term than any of the other justices), 96 of which were for the Court.
The Chief frequently disagreed with his colleagues who were activists in using
judicial power to protect individual liberties from legislative interference.
Stone still believed in judicial restraint and objected to the justices trying
to write their own liberal social views into law. Stone's insistence that the
justices should be controlled by an informed sense of judicial self restraint
was just as applicable to the new liberal Court as it had been to the old
conservative Court. He also protested against the justices’ use of a "preferred
freedoms" doctrine to invalidate any legislation affecting First Amendment
rights.
The Chief wrote for the Court in many of the most difficult and
perplexing cases. In United States v. Classic (1941), he ruled
that Congress could regulate a primary election if it constituted part of the
overall machinery for choosing elected federal officials a significant victory
for African American voters who had been disenfranchised in "white primaries" in
the segregated South. When war powers of the executive and Congress clashed with
civil liberties during World War II, however, Stone frequently upheld the
government. His most controversial decisions involved constitutionally
unprecedented cases involving German saboteurs, Ex parte Quirin
(1942); the war crimes trial of Japanese General Yamashita, In re Yamashita
(1946); and the imposition of a curfew on Japanese Americans and their exclusion
from the west coast, Hirabayashi v. United States (1943). Stone
reasoned that the Constitution committed war making to Congress and the
President, and that if that power was reasonably exercised, the justices should
construe it with full cognizance of its special characteristics. In war, as in
peace, according to the Chief Justice, the Constitution was a flexible
instrument of government that both granted and limited power. It was the
difficult task of the Court to balance power and individual liberties to achieve
a delicate equilibrium to preserve the related values of the public good and
private rights.14 The Chief's coming down on the side of public good
in the guise of military commanders disappointed his more libertarian admirers.
Stone's career on the Court extend over a transition from a time
when judicial values emphasized property rights and dual federalism to the
modern era that stresses "the free play of the human spirit"15 and an
expanded national power. Cast as a liberal on the old Court, Stone truly was an
independent thinking pragmatist who sought balance in all aspects of life. As
the justices of the new Court increasingly championed the judiciary's role as
the palladium of the people's freedom, Stone's views became a restraining
influence on their activism. His voice was one of prudence for the New Deal. He
sought to temper predilection with restraint and carefully crafted opinions. For
Stone, a personal preference for a particular policy was but one factor in his
quest for judgment. He believed law was an evolutionary process, changing, as
did the common law, in an orderly manner. Thus he preferred narrow holdings
making incremental advances as the best way to accommodate change.16
While the attitudes of the justices shifted around him, Stone's stayed in place
"like a block of New England granite."17
As an individual justice Stone made dynamic
contributions to American law, adapting the Court and Constitution to the
problems of the twentieth century. Although critics found him disappointing as a
Chief Justice, Stone, the "judge's judge," exerted a profound influence on the
course of events. At its best, the legacy he left was the pillar of our
constitutional law.
NOTES
1. Girouard v. United States, 328 U.S. 61 (1946): dissenting, p.
70.
2. Alpheus Thomas Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law
(New York: Viking Press, 1956), p. 806.
3. Harlan Fiske Stone, "The Conscientious Objector," Columbia
University Quarterly, October 1919.
4. Melvin I. Urofsky, "Stone, Harlan Fiske," in American National
Biography, Volume 20, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 850.
5. Melvin I. Urofsky, Division and Discord: The Supreme Court under Stone
and Vinson, 1941 1953 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina
Press, 1997), p. 10.
6. "Stone, Harlan Fiske," Current Biography: Who's News and Why, 1941,
ed. Maxine Block (New York: H.W. Wilson, 1941), p, 836.
7. Mason, p. 347.
8. United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 (1936); dissenting p. 78.
9. Harlan Fiske Stone, "The Common Law in the United States," an address
delivered at the Harvard Tercentenary celebration, 1936. Qtd. in Mason, p. 434.
10. 304 U.S. 144 (1938).
11. 307 U.S. 496 (1939); concurring, p. 518.
12. 310 U.S. 586 (1940); dissenting, p. 601.
13. Robert J. Steamer, Chief Justice: Leadership and the Supreme Court
(Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1986), p. 265 266.
14. Mason, p. 683.
15. Felix Frankfurter, Qtd. in Robert G. McCloskey, The American
Supreme Court (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 181.
16. G. Edward White, The American Judicial Tradition: Profiles of
Leading American Judges (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 218
219.
17. Wesley McCune, The Nine Young Men, p. 249, Qtd in Mason, p.
780.
FOR FURTHER READING
Mason, Alpheus Thomas. Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law. New York:
Viking Press, 1956.
Pritchett, C. Herman. The Roosevelt Court: A Study in Judicial Politics and
Values. New York: Macmillan, 1948.
Steamer, Robert J. Chief Justice: Leadership and the Supreme Court.
Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1986.
Urofsky, Melvin I. Division and Discord: The Supreme Court under Stone and
Vinson,
1941 1953. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1997.
Wechsler, Herbert. "Mr. Justice Stone and the Constitution." Columbia Law
Review 46 (1946):
764 800.
White, G. Edward. The American Judicial Tradition: Profiles of Leading
American Judges. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Theodore M. Vestal (Ph.D., Stanford) is Professor Political Science at Oklahoma
State University, where he teaches courses on public law. He is the author of
Ethiopia: A Post Cold War African State and International
Education: Its History and Promise for Today.
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