On Tuesday, October 17 at 5 pm Eastern Time, Professor John Q. Barrett will be our guest on Zoom to discuss Robert H. Jackson, Attorney General during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, appointed by FDR; and, appointed by Harry S Truman as United States Chief Counsel at the Nuremberg Trial from November 1945 to July 1946 of individuals at the center of Nazi criminality. Nineteen of the twenty-two individual defendants were found guilty on October 1, 1946.
Professor Barrett is Professor of Law at St. John’s University in New York and Elizabeth S. Lenna Fellow at the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown, New York. Here is Professor Barrett’s faculty site at St. John’s:
https://www.stjohns.edu/law/faculty/john-q-barrett .
While that site contains links for other relevant internet sites, these may be of particular interest:
The Jackson List, which Professor Barrett writes and sends out, with information about Justice Jackson, the Supreme Court, and the Nuremberg trials: https://thejacksonlist.com/author/jqb/ ;
Professor Barrett’s personal website: https://johnqbarrett.com/ ;
Justice Jackson’s summation at Nuremberg: https://famous-trials.com/nuremberg/1933-jacksonsummation ;
Justice Jackson’s opening statement at Nuremberg: https://www.roberthjackson.org/speech-and-writing/opening-statement-before-the-international-military-tribunal/ , which is found on the site of the Robert H. Jackson Center.
In addition to his most famous role as Chief Prosecutor at Nuremberg, Justice Jackson lived an astonishing career in the law and government. One of the most accomplished writers on the Court, Justice Jackson never went to college (but intensely studied Shakespeare, as did Abe Lincoln—let that be a lesson to all of you!), and attended only one year of law school, apprenticing to lawyers in order to gain entry into the New York Bar. New York remains one of the very few states to allow individuals to “read law,” with one year of law school and the rest of the required time working under the supervision of a New York lawyer: https://www.nybarexam.org/eligible/eligibility.htm .
From “Justice Robert H. Jackson ‘Arrives’ in Washington” by G. Edward White, Journal of Supreme Court History 48 (2023) 148-173 at 148:
"Between 1934 and 1941 Robert Houghwout Jackson had one of the most meteoric rises within the officialdom of the federal government. He went from being general counsel of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (1934) to temporary special counsel for the Securities and Exchange Commission (1935) to assistant attorney general heading the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division (1937) to solicitor general of the United States (1938)) to attorney general of the United States (1940) not associate justice of the Supreme Court (1941)."
Justice Jackson was an intimate of FDR, and wrote a memoir of the President as Jackson knew and worked with and for him. Professor Barrett took the manuscript of this work and did a marvelous job in fashioning Jackson’s words into a book: That Man: An Insider’s Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt,” edited and introduced by John Q. Barrett (Oxford University Press 2003).
Please join us to discuss the life and work of this extraordinary man, led by a legal scholar who has devoted his career to studying Robert H. Jackson.
The usual rules apply: if you want to participate, send me an email by Saturday, October 14, at arthur.fergenson@ansalaw.com .
See you then!
Arthur Fergenson