About Robert H. Jackson
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", 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". His record of accomplishment caused Justice Louis Brandeis to once remark that Jackson should be Solicitor General for life. Jackson became active in politics as a Democrat; in 1916, he spearheaded Jamestown's local Wilson for President organization. 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. In March 1938, Jackson became United States Solicitor General, succeeding Stanley Forman Reed, who had been appointed to the Supreme Court.
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