Tuesday, January 13, 2009

U.S. Supreme Court, 1951-52: The View from the Law Clerks

John Q. Barrett, St. John's University School of Law, announces, via his "Jackson List," the publication in the St. John's Law Review of a roundtable discussion of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1951-52 Term. (The published roundtable is here.) Professor Barrett explains:
In 2007, the Robert H. Jackson Center [pictured at left] and the Supreme Court Historical Society sponsored a 55th anniversary roundtable discussion of the Court’s 1951-52 Term. The participants were Charles Hileman, former law clerk to Justice Harold H. Burton; Hon. Abner J. Mikva, former law clerk to Justice Sherman Minton; James C.N. Paul, former law clerk to Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson; Neal P. Rutledge, former law clerk to Justice Hugo L. Black; and Marshall L. Small, former law clerk to Justice William O. Douglas. The roundtable, which I moderated with Dean Ken Gormley of Duquesne Law School, also included a videotaped 2002 Steel Seizure interview with Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, former law clerk to Justice Jackson.***

In addition to the Steel Seizure Cases, the topics discussed include the Justices of the Vinson Court; Zorach v. Clausen (Establishment of religion); Sacher v. United States (criminal contempt convictions of attorneys representing officials of the Communist Party of the United States); Adler v. Board of Education (teacher’s refusal to sign an anti-Communist oath); and Brown v. Board of Education and the other school segregation cases that were in 1951-52 coming to the Supreme Court.