Harold Hitz Burton

Harold Hitz Burton lived from June 22, 1888 to October 28, 1964 and was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 45th mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, as a United States senator from Ohio, and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Born in Boston, Burton practiced law in Cleveland after graduating from Harvard Law School, served in the United States Army during World War One, and became active in Republican Party politics, winning election to the Ohio House of Representatives and later to the United States Senate in 1940 after serving as mayor of Cleveland. After the retirement of Associate Justice Owen J. Roberts, President Harry S. Truman successfully nominated Burton to the Supreme Court, where he served until 1958, when he was succeeded by Potter Stewart. Known as a dispassionate, pragmatic jurist who preferred to rule on technical and procedural rather than constitutional grounds, and as an affable justice who helped ease tension on the Court during an acrimonious time, he wrote the majority opinion in Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath and Lorain Journal Co. v. United States, both in 1951, and helped shape the Courts unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.