Harlan F. Stone

Harlan Fiske Stone lived from October 11, 1872 to April 22, 1946 and was an American attorney who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court from 1925 to 1941 and then as the twelfth chief justice of the United States from 1941 until his death. He also served as United States Attorney General from 1924 to 1925 under President Calvin Coolidge, with whom he had attended Amherst College. Raised in western Massachusetts, he practiced law in New York City after graduating from Columbia Law School, became dean of Columbia Law School and a partner at Sullivan and Cromwell, and served on the War Departments Board of Inquiry evaluating conscientious objectors during World War I. As Attorney General under Coolidge he reformed the Justice Department after the scandals of the Harding administration and pursued antitrust cases. Coolidge nominated him to the Supreme Court in 1925 to succeed Joseph McKenna, where he joined Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Louis Brandeis in calling for judicial restraint, and later with Brandeis and Benjamin N. Cardozo formed the liberal bloc known as the Three Musketeers that generally upheld the New Deal. His majority opinions in United States v. Darby Lumber Co. and United States v. Carolene Products Co. were influential in shaping standards of judicial scrutiny. Franklin D. Roosevelt named him chief justice in 1941, and as chief justice he wrote the majority opinion in Ex parte Quirin and presided over Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the internment of Japanese Americans as constitutional.