Biography

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 as Chief United States Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals following World War II.

Jackson was the last U.S. Supreme Court justice who did not have 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 just a year. Jackson is well known 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."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. 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. Justice Antonin Scalia, who occupied the seat once held by Jackson, considered Jackson to be "the best legal stylist of the 20th century."