Sir Knight Robert H. Jackson:
Supreme Court Judge and Prosecutor at Nuremberg

In his day Sir Knight Jackson served in a Presidential Cabinet, on the US Supreme Court, and perhaps most significant of all, as United States Chief Prosecutor of Nazi war criminals.

Robert Jackson was born in Spring Creek, Pennsylvania, on February 13, 1892, to William E. And Angelina Jackson. When he was a child, the family moved to Frewsburg, New York.

After high school the youth went to work as a clerk for an attorney cousin and prominent Democrat in nearby Jamestown. Although he later attended law school in Albany for a year, Robert was essentially a product of a vanishing system whereby one studied law as an apprentice for another lawyer. During his time in Albany, he made the acquaintance of a young state senator and Mason named Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After passing his bar exams in 1913, Jackson began to practice law, and within a few years, he became one of Jamestown's (and indeed far western New York's) leading barristers. He also became somewhat active in Democratic politics and bar association activities.

Throughout his law career, he kept a caption on his wall with a quote from Brother Rudyard Kipling that read: "He travels fastest who travels alone," a phrase he exemplified in the progress of his own life.

In 1916 Robert married Irene Gerhardt, and the couple subsequently had a son and a daughter.

During his years in Jamestown, Robert H. Jackson became a member of Mount Moriah Lodge No. 145. He received his degrees on September 17, October 1, and October 22, 1929. In November 1930 Jackson took the Scottish Rite degrees in the Valley of Jamestown, New York. He also joined the York Rite bodies in Jamestown including Jamestown Commandery No. 61. In 2001 his framed Knight Templar sword had an honored spot in the Jamestown Masonic Temple. To the outside world he ranks with cartoonist Brad Anderson, creator of the Great Dane with a human mind set, Marmaduke, as Jamestown's most famous Mason.

Brother Bob Jackson began his political life when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected governor of the Empire State in November 1928, becoming a key advisor to FDR. Nonetheless, he remained in western New York until FDR entered the White House.

Roosevelt himself eventually concluded that Jackson was too much of a "gentleman" to be a successful candidate, but he still remained in serious contention for higher appointments.

Three times Robert Jackson was rated as a serious candidate for Supreme Court consideration. Three times he was passed over, first for Felix Frankfurter, second for Brother William 0. Douglas, and then for Attorney General Frank Murphy. The latter appointment, however, led to Jackson being named to the cabinet in January 1940 as a replacement for Murphy. A little over a year later, Chief Justice Hughes retired, and the President subsequently elevated Justice Harlan F. Stone as his replacement and then named Jackson as the new Associate Justice.

In his early years on the High Court, Jackson found himself having to make some challenging decisions balancing the needs of national security and civil liberties. When the national interest was not at stake as in the famous case of "West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette" (1943), he came down forcefully on the side of liberty. For those who may have forgotten, this was the famous case that held one could not be required to salute the flag if it conflicted with his/her religious views. Yet it said free speech should also have its limits. In a case that might be worth revisiting in more recent times, Jackson held in a dissenting opinion in the case of "Terminiello v. Chicago" (1949) that "if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact."

In his closing speech in July 1946, Jackson made the eloquent conclusion that if "you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime." While his overall performance was not without criticism, it did result in nineteen convictions and three acquittals.

Chief Justice Stone had died in April 1946. Jackson apparently felt disappointment that the President named his Treasury Secretary, Brother Fred Vinson of Louisa, Kentucky, to lead the Court and probably thought that his quarrel with Black might have been responsible. Nonetheless, he returned to the fall term of the Court in October and generally maintained a discreet silence in his public pronouncements concerning his views on the Alabama judge.

One might add that there were other Masons on the Court in those years besides Jackson and Vinson, including Hugo Black, William 0. Douglas, Sherman Minton, Harold Burton, Tom Clark, and after Vinson's death, Sir Knight Earl Warren.

Jackson's significant judicial decisions in those latter years included his upholding the 1949 conviction of Communist Party leaders in "Dennis v. United States" in 1951, coupled with his dissent in government efforts to inquire about private thoughts of suspected Communists in 1950 in "American Communications Ass'n v. Douds." Put simply, Jackson upheld the right of Communists (or anyone else) to think as they wished, but not to actually "advocate the overthrow of the government."

In another important 1952 decision, he concurred with a court majority in its invalidation of government seizure of private steel mills during the Korean War in "Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer."

In what may have been the most significant icant case of the mid-century, "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954), Jackson had some doubts but ultimately joined in the unanimous verdict. He had been hospitalized but was present when the court reached the monumental decision on May 17 to overturn the old decision rendered in "Plessey v. Ferguson" (1896) and to outlaw segregated public schools. Ironically, by that time Jackson had increasingly leaned toward what became termed the doctrine of "judicial restraint." Jackson himself realized that this may have seemed at variance with his earlier endorsement of FOR's 1937 court reform plan, but nearly two decades of experience had tested and altered his philosophy.

These later theories were exercised in practice by Jackson's law clerk in the early fifties, William H. Rehnquist, who as a protégé spent some thirty years on the Federal Bench including nearly two decades as Chief Justice.

Sir Knight and Justice Jackson died a few months later on October 9, 1954r after suffering a second heart attack. While his fame may not be as great as many of his fellow judges, his significance is no less a celebrated one. His court opinions have been cited as among the most eloquent and well-reasoned in court history. This alone would lend strong support to WiLliam Leuchtenberg's view expressed at the beginning of this article.

Note: A full-length biography of the judge is found in Eugene C. Gerharctts America's Advocate: Robert H. Jackson (958). More useful for this brief article is the sketch by Douglas P. Woodlock in American National Biography (2000) and the introduction by William Leuchtenberg to Jackson's That Man: An Insider's View of Franklin Roosevelt (2003), published nearly a half-century after his death. Jackson's Blue Lodge, Scottish Rite, and Shrine record is found in William H. Denslow, 10,000 Famous Freemasons (1958), It, p. 286. Jerome Erickson, Nicholas Andin, and Robert Cave have been helpful in their search for his still incomplete York Rite records.