Jackson List: Voting for the Last Time (1940)
In early 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was planning, at least to some degree, to return to private life after two terms in office. Robert H. Jackson was F.D.R.’s newly-appointed United States...
View ArticleJackson List: An Invitation to Join in Thanksgiving (1941)
In war-besieged London in September 1940, Harold Laski, a professor at the London School of Economics and a leading Socialist party official, thinker, and writer, penned a letter to Robert H. Jackson,...
View ArticleJackson List: Departed Friends, Remembered
The events of 2016 included, sadly, departures of special friends. The five who are highlighted here were connected directly to the life, work, and major legacies of Justice Robert H. Jackson. These...
View ArticleJackson List: Inaugurations and Change (1949 & 1953)
On the morning of January 20, 1949, Justice Robert H. Jackson and his wife Irene drove in to Washington from their Hickory Hill home in McLean, Virginia. At the Supreme Court building, they met their...
View ArticleJackson List: 125th Birthday
Tomorrow, February 13, 2017, will mark the quasquicentennial of Robert Houghwout Jackson’s 1892 birth, in his family’s farmhouse in Spring Creek Township, Warren County, Pennsylvania. For your Jackson...
View ArticleJackson List: Judge Gorsuch’s Admiration for Justice Jackson’s Writing … and...
In his opening remarks this afternoon before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, U.S. Circuit Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, nominated to fill the U.S. Supreme Court seat that has been vacant since...
View ArticleJackson List: Alma Soller McLay (1920-2017), Nuremberger
I am very sorry to report that Alma Soller McLay died earlier this week in California. Alma McLay was the last surviving member of Justice Robert H. Jackson’s original team on what became the United...
View ArticleJackson List: Lawful, Political, Deplorable Senatorial Behavior (1954)
When Justice Robert H. Jackson died suddenly in early October 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States had just started its new term. The U.S. Congress was in recess—both Houses had adjourned on...
View ArticleJackson List: Commencement, and Cowslip, Season
For the Jackson List: Robert H. Jackson’s deep ties to Jamestown, New York, the city he came to call his adult hometown, began in 1909. That June, Jackson, age seventeen, graduated as valedictorian...
View ArticleJackson List: Supreme Court “Opinion Dumping,” 1950 & Today
On Monday, June 5, 1950, the last day of its 1949-50 term, the Supreme Court of the United States announced its judgments and released written opinions in seventeen cases. The Court then began its...
View ArticleJackson List: Judge Jon O. Newman’s Jackson Lecture, Chautauqua Institution,...
I am very pleased to report that the Honorable Jon O. Newman, United States Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, will deliver Chautauqua Institution’s 13th annual Robert H....
View ArticleJackson List: Remembering, Studying, and Living Up to Barnette
On June 14, 2018, people in the United States—many, and indeed most, people, I hope—will mark and celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia State Board of...
View ArticleJackson List: Nuremberg & Eichmann
By the time Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally in May 1945, the victorious Allied nations had been committed officially, for more than two years, to hold defeated Nazi leaders accountable for...
View ArticleJackson List: A Doctor’s Thanksgiving Wisdom (1953)
Robert H. Jackson lived actively, vigorously, despite knowing of his family’s history of heart disease. His father, Will Jackson, died in 1915 at age 52, apparently of heart trouble. Other members of...
View ArticleJackson List: Time for a New U.S. Secretary of State (1944)
In late November 1944, United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull, nearly twelve years in office, tendered his resignation to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Secretary Hull, age 73, did not wish...
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Jackson List: Happy Holidays!
Thank you all, Jackson List newcomers this year and longtime readers. I truly appreciate your interest, your “forwards,” your recruitments of new subscribers, and your comments. For your reading in...
View ArticleJackson List: Birthday Reading (1938)
Today marks the 126th anniversary of Robert Houghwout Jackson’s 1892 birth, in his family’s farmhouse in Spring Creek Township, Warren County, Pennsylvania. It seems that on many a February 13, Robert...
View ArticleJackson List: Firing a Cabinet Officer Face-to-Face (1945)
In early 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt promoted Robert H. Jackson, then the Solicitor General of the United States, to serve as U.S. Attorney General, a member of the President’s Cabinet....
View ArticleJackson List: Nine Votes, Nine Present: The Unanimity of Brown v. Board of...
For the Jackson List: On May 17, 1954, sixty-four years ago today, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Brown v. Board of Education and its companion cases. The Court held that government...
View ArticleAt Hickory Hill (June 1968)
For the Jackson List: In late 1952, Justice Robert H. Jackson hired E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr., to be his law clerk. Prettyman then was a third year law student at the University of Virginia. He also...
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