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Stone Court (judges)

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Established
  
1941

Country
  
United States

Dissolved
  
1946

No. of positions
  
9

Stone Court (judges)

Location
  
Supreme Court Building Washington, D.C.

The Stone Court refers to the Supreme Court of the United States from 1941 to 1946, when Harlan F. Stone served as Chief Justice of the United States. Stone succeeded Charles Evans Hughes as Chief Justice after the latter's retirement, and Stone served as Chief Justice until his death, at which point Fred Vinson was nominated and confirmed as Stone's replacement. Presiding over the country during World War II, the Stone Court delivered important war-time rulings while also affecting other areas of American life.

Contents

Membership

The Stone Court began in 1941, when Associate Justice Stone was confirmed to replace Charles Evans Hughes as Chief Justice. Stone had served as an Associate Justice since 1925, when President Calvin Coolidge nominated him to the bench, and President Franklin Roosevelt successfully nominated him to become Chief Justice. At the beginning of the Stone Court, the court consisted of Stone, Owen Roberts, and seven Roosevelt appointees who had joined the court since 1937: Hugo Black, Stanley F. Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy, James F. Byrnes, and Robert H. Jackson (the latter two joined the court days after Stone's elevation to Chief Justice). In 1942, Byrnes resigned from the court to become the war-time Director of the Office of Economic Stabilization; Roosevelt appointed Wiley Blount Rutledge as his replacement. Owen Roberts retired in 1945, and President Harry Truman appointed Harold Hitz Burton to replace him. Stone died in 1946, at which point Truman appointed Fred Vinson as Stone's successor.

Chief Justice Associate Justice

Rulings of the Court

Major rulings of the Stone Court include:

  • Glasser v. United States (1942): In a 7-2 decision written by Justice Murphy, the court reversed a criminal conviction on the basis that the defense attorney had a conflict of interest. The court also ruled that the exclusion of women from the jury pool violated the Sixth Amendment's Impartial Jury Clause. The court held that jury pools should be a "cross-section of the community."
  • Betts v. Brady (1942): In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Roberts, the court ruled that indigent defendants did not have the right to an appointed counsel in state courts under the Due Process Clause. The case was overruled by Gideon v. Wainwright (1963).
  • Wickard v. Filburn (1942): In a unanimous decision written by Justice Jackson, the court upheld wheat production quotas established by the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. The appellant argued that the production quotas overstepped the powers granted to Congress by the Interstate Commerce Clause, as the appellant used the wheat to feed his own animals. However, the court ruled that the farmer would have bought more wheat had he not grown his own, thus affecting interstate commerce.
  • West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943): In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Jackson, the court held that the Free Speech Clause protected students from being forced to salute the American flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The case overruled Minersville School District v. Gobitis, which had been decided just three years earlier by many of the same justices.
  • Korematsu v. United States (1944): In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Black, the court upheld Executive Order 9066, which ordered the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans, many of whom were United States citizens. The court accepted the government's argument that the order was a matter of "military urgency." In 2011, the Solicitor General's Office publicly disavowed the ruling. Legal scholars have denounced the ruling as one of the worst in American history.
  • Smith v. Allwright (1944): In an 8-1 decision written by Justice Reed, the court struck down a Texas law that allowed white primaries. The case overruled Grovey v. Townsend (1935), which had held white primaries to be constitutional on the basis that political parties are private organizations.
  • International Shoe Co. v. Washington (1945): In an 8-0 decision written by Justice Black, the court held that parties could be subject to the personal jurisdiction of a state court if said parties have "minimum contacts" with the state. The court rejected the appellant's argument that the company should not fall under the jurisdiction of the state of Washington since it did not maintain a permanent "situs" of business in the state, despite doing business in the state.

    • Judicial philosophy

    Stone had largely sided with the government's position when the Hughes Court struck down several pieces of New Deal legislation, and the Stone Court (with the addition of several Roosevelt appointees) consistently upheld Congressional power pursuant to the Commerce Clause. The Stone Court also upheld broad war-time powers for the government. The Stone Court was less deferential in the area of civil liberties, striking down laws in cases such as Barnett, although Korematsu was a major exception to this trend. Despite Roosevelt's appointment of seven of the nine justices (and the elevation of Stone), the justices held independent views and often found each other at odds in regard to civil liberties. Stone himself received criticism for presiding over a divided and quarrelsome court. Justice Frankfurter often took a position supporting judicial restraint in which the court took deference to the decisions of elected officials, while Justices Black and Douglas were more willing to strike down laws and precedents for what they saw as violations of constitutional rights. Murphy and Rutledge joined Black and Douglas as part of the more liberal bloc, while Jackson, Reed, and Stone tended to side with Frankfurter. Roberts often sided with the Frankfurter bloc, but was more conservative than the other eight justices. Though outnumbered, the more liberal bloc led by Black and Douglas often took the majority in cases by peeling off the votes from the moderate bloc, and the two groupings of justices did not form as tight of blocs as had existed in the Hughes Court. The short length of the Stone Court gave it little chance to establish a definitive legacy. However, the Stone Court continued the Constitutional Revolution of 1937 that had started during the Hughes Court and foreshadowed the liberal rulings of the Warren Court.

    References

    Stone Court (judges) Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA