Stone, Harlan Fiske

(1872-1946)

   Born in Chesterfield, New Hampshire, and a graduate of Amherst College in 1894 and Columbia University Law School in 1898, Harlan Fiske Stone became the eleventh chief justice of the Supreme Court. After beginning his own private law practice, he joined the faculty of Columbia University Law School in 1899, where he became dean in 1910. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge appointed him as attorney general, where he helped reform the federal prison service and the Alien Property Custodian’s Office, an area of corruption during the previous administration. He was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1925. With Louis D. Brandeis and Benjamin Cardozo, who replaced Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1932, Stone was part of the “liberal” group on the Supreme Court and an upholder of judicial restraint. A defender of civil liberties, Stone dissented in Minersville School District v. Gobitis in 1940 against the decision approving mandatory saluting of the flag in public schools. The court accepted his view when it reversed their original ruling in 1943 in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Stone as chief justice to succeed Charles Evans Hughes in 1941. However, he did not seem able to impose his personality or a consistent view on the court. His own position was often difficult to characterize as he supported the decisions upholding the internment of Japanese Americans but dissented when the court ruled to uphold the right to deny citizenship to conscientious objectors in Girouard v. United States in 1946. He died shortly after reading that decision.