Wiley Blount Rutledge

Wiley Blount Rutledge Jr. lived from July 20, 1894 to September 10, 1949 and was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1943 to 1949. The ninth and final justice appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he is best known for impassioned defenses of civil liberties, favoring broad interpretations of the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause, and arguing that the Bill of Rights applied in its totality to the states. Born in Cloverport, Kentucky, Rutledge attended several colleges and universities before briefly practicing law in Boulder, Colorado, then taught law at the University of Colorado, at Washington University in St. Louis, where he became dean, and at the University of Iowa, also serving as dean there; as an academic he opposed Supreme Court decisions striking down parts of the New Deal and supported Roosevelts unsuccessful attempt to expand the Court, which brought him to the Presidents attention and led to his appointment to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. When Justice James F. Byrnes resigned from the Supreme Court, Roosevelt nominated Rutledge to take his place, and the Senate confirmed him by voice vote. His majority opinion in Thomas v. Collins in 1945 endorsed a broad interpretation of the Free Speech Clause, and in a famed dissent in the wartime case In re Yamashita in 1946 he voted to void the war crimes conviction of Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita, condemning a trial he viewed as violating basic principles of justice and fairness, though he joined the majority in Hirabayashi v. United States in 1943 and Korematsu v. United States in 1944 upholding the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two. Among the most liberal justices ever to serve on the Court, favoring a flexible approach that prioritized individual rights, Rutledge died in 1949 after a massive stroke, having served six years on the Court, and was replaced by the considerably more conservative Sherman Minton.