"Hesitating between two worlds": The civil rights odyssey of Robert H. Jackson.
Item
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Title
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"Hesitating between two worlds": The civil rights odyssey of Robert H. Jackson.
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Identifier
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AAI3283210
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identifier
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3283210
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Creator
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Shimsky, MaryJane.
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Contributor
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Adviser: John P. Diggins
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Date
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2007
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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History, United States | Biography
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Abstract
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Robert Houghwout Jackson, Supreme Court justice from 1941 to 1954 and chief prosecutor at the first Nuremberg war crimes trial, was a critical voice in the deliberations leading to the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Jackson viewed Brown, and other civil rights cases, as raising dilemmas not easily resolved. These dilemmas, and his ultimate resolution of them, arose from his upbringing in rural Upstate New York; his law practice in nearby Jamestown; his years in Washington, DC; his work in the Roosevelt Administration; and his judicial philosophy. The anti-government ideology of his rural youth was tempered somewhat by his experiences with reform administrations in Jamestown and in Washington. But his experience as a New Deal lawyer reinforced the belief he had acquired from his traditionalist legal training, that social reform was not the job of the courts. The ethnic insularity of his rural upbringing, coupled with his firsthand experience in the nation's capital with Southern politicians' intractability on the issue of race relations, made him fear that pressing too hard on civil rights could compromise the Court's authority.;As justice, Jackson's beliefs in judicial restraint and judicial neutrality led him to enforce African Americans' rights under existing law, but made him hesitate when doing so required an extension of legal doctrine. Segregation posed especially difficult problems, as the legislative history of the Fourteenth Amendment gave no clear statement prohibiting segregation, and the Court itself had authorized "separate but equal" in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). After much trial and error in draft opinions, Jackson neutralized the problems of legislative intent and prior precedent with the argument that changed historical circumstances required Plessy to be overruled. His views influenced Chief Justice Earl Warren's unanimous opinion.;The Robert H. Jackson Collection at the Library of Congress, Jackson's oral history at Columbia University, and his published writings, supplemented by other archival and published sources, permit a rich study of his dilemmas and how he resolved them.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
