Harlan Fiske Stone

Harlan Stone (around 1930)

Harlan Fiske Stone (born October 11, 1872 in Chesterfield , Cheshire County , New Hampshire , †  April 22, 1946 in Washington, DC ) was an American lawyer and politician . He served as US Attorney General under US President Calvin Coolidge and as the twelfth Chief Justice of the United States .

Study and job

Stone first completed a general education course at Amherst College in Massachusetts , which he finished in 1894 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) . From 1895 to 1896 he was a history teacher at the Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn .

In 1895 he began to study law at Columbia Law School , which he graduated in 1898 with a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.). After admission to the bar, he initially worked for the law firm Satterlee, Sullivan & Stone and later as a partner in the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell . As early as 1899 he became an assistant professor at Columbia Law School, which appointed him professor of law from 1902 to 1905 . From 1910 to 1923 he served as the Dean of the Law School of Columbia University.

family

Stone was married to Agnes Harvey Stone (1873-1958). They had (at least) two children.

The son Marshall Harvey Stone was a mathematician whose main field of work was analysis , especially functional analysis , and who also contributed to the theory of Boolean algebras .

They also had their son Lauson Harvey Stone (1904-1999), who was married to Jane Hunter Colwell Stone (1901-2001).

Political career

Attorney General under President Coolidge

On April 7, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge, his classmate at Amherst College, appointed him to succeed Harry M. Daugherty as Attorney General in his cabinet . In this capacity, he was responsible for the appointment of J. Edgar Hoover on May 10, 1924 as director of the investigative office of the Department of Justice, which he expanded to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and headed until his death on May 2, 1972.

On May 2, 1925, he resigned as Minister of Justice. Successor was John G. Sargent .

Supreme Court

Supreme Court judge

US Supreme Court Justices (1925): (back from left) Edward Sanford , George Sutherland, Pierce Butler, Harlan Fiske Stone; (front from left) James C. McReynolds, Oliver Wendell Holmes , William Howard Taft , Willis Van Devanter, Louis Brandeis

After his resignation as Minister of Justice, he was President Coolidge judge ( Associate Judge ) at the United States Supreme Court nominee.

His 1926 reasoning in a litigation between the states of Massachusetts and New York is still considered by law scholars and students to be one of the worst reasons for a decision in Supreme Court history because of the writing style. However, over the years he became a respected judge on the Supreme Court.

Together with Judges Louis Brandeis and Benjamin N. Cardozo , he formed the liberal wing of the Supreme Court between 1932 and 1937 . The judges, known as the "Three Musketeers", supported the New Deal policy initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt with their opinions . In 1933 Stone was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1939 to the American Philosophical Society .

On the other hand, however, they faced the four conservative judges (the so-called " Four Horsemen ") James C. McReynolds , George Sutherland , Pierce Butler and Willis Van Devanter . Because of the neutral then Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and the judge Owen Roberts , there were often different majorities. During this time he was the author of several important decisions on labor and commercial law.

Rise to Chief Justice

His support for Roosevelt's New Deal earned him the sympathy of the President, who named him on July 3, 1941, to succeed Hughes as 12th  Chief Justice of the United States . In this capacity, on July 31, 1942, he founded the “Ex parte Quirin” decision , in which the Supreme Court upheld the long-term prison sentences and several death sentences passed by a military court against several German saboteurs. In addition, on December 3, 1945, he was the author of a landmark judgment on litigation in civil proceedings.

On April 22, 1946, he died of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 73 while a judgment was being delivered . US President Harry S. Truman appointed Fred M. Vinson as the new Chairman of the Supreme Court.

To date, Stone was the only judge to sit in all nine of the Supreme Court's chairs.

A controversy arose when, in his posthumously published memoirs, he described the Nuremberg Court of Justice , which condemned the main war criminals of the Nazi era , as a "first-rate lynch party" directed against Germans.

Other offices and awards

In addition to his legal career, he was also President of the Association of Faculties of Law. He was also Chairman of the Board of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. As early as 1900 he was awarded a Master of Arts (MA hc) by his alma mater , Amherst College, and in 1913 he was awarded a Doctor of Laws LL.D. hc connected. In 1924 he received an honorary doctorate from Yale University and in 1925 a Doctor of Laws hc from Columbia University and Williams College in Williamstown (Massachusetts) .

Publications and important decisions

• HF Stone: Public Control of Business , 1940 (decision book)
• HF Stone: United States v. Darby, 1941
• HF Stone: International Shoe v. State of Washington, 1945
• HF Stone: Law and Its Administration . New Jersey, 2001 edition.
• Alpheus T. Mason, HF Stone: Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law . New York 1956 (memoir, posthumous )

literature

• Miriam Galston: Activism and Restraint: The Evolution of Harlan Fiske Stone's Judicial Philosophy . 1995
• Samuel Joseph Konefsky: Chief Justice Stone and the Supreme Court. Reprint, 1971. New York
• Melvin I. Urofsky: Division and Discord: The Supreme Court Under Stone and Vinson, 1941-1953 . Univ. of South Carolina Press, Columbia 1997.

Article in TIME magazine about Stone's appointment and tenure as Minister of Justice:

• A resignation . In: TIME magazine , October 15, 1923
• From New Hampshire . In: TIME magazine , April 14, 1924
• Enforce The Law! . In: TIME Magazine , April 21, 1924
• Confirmed . In: TIME Magazine , February 16, 1925

Article in TIME magazine about Stone's tenure as Supreme Court judge:

• Decisions . In: TIME Magazine , December 6, 1926
• Supreme Matters . In: TIME Magazine , May 6, 1929
• Enforcer-in-Chief . In: TIME Magazine , January 27, 1930
• Question of Conscience . In: TIME Magazine , January 25, 1932
• Cardozo for Holmes . In: TIME Magazine , February 22, 1932
• Old Men, New Battles . In: TIME magazine , November 15, 1937
• Underdog into Cow , article in TIME magazine on February 17, 1941

Article in TIME magazine about Stone's tenure as Chief Justice and obituary:

• Ominous decision . In: TIME Magazine , June 22, 1942
• The Dissenting Court . In: TIME Magazine , October 9, 1944
• In trust . In: TIME magazine , December 24, 1944
• The Case Should Be Stayed ... In: TIME-Magazine , April 29, 1946

Web links

• Harlan F. Stone in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Harlan F. Stone in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)
• Biography on the homepage of the Ministry of Justice
• Biography on the homepage of the US Supreme Court
• Biography in the US legal dictionary

Individual evidence

1. ^ Member History: Harlan F. Stone. American Philosophical Society, accessed December 28, 2018 .