Welcome to The Jackson List!
This is an archive of hundreds of John Q. Barrett essays about Justice Robert H. Jackson, the U.S. Supreme Court, the post-World War II trials at Nuremberg of Nazi war criminals, and related topics.
This archive is organized in reverse chronological order by original posting dates, from most recent back to 2003.
To search for specific topics, use keywords or phrases (in quotation marks) here:
U.S. Supreme Court Justice James Clark McReynolds, appointed in 1914 by President Woodrow Wilson, a fellow southern Democrat, was an accomplished person who had some redeeming qualities and kindly moments.
Justice McReynolds also was brusque, gruff, caustic, a racist, an antisemite, a hostile colleague to at least some justices, a sexist, an abusive boss, and an unreconstructed southerner. He was a judicial foe of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, a narrow interpreter of federal government and state government constitutional and statutory powers to legislate for the public welfare. When McReynolds retired from the Supreme Court (took senior status) in January 1941, just days after President Roosevelt began his third term, there was little sadness in Washington, including, it seems, among Supreme Court justices.
Five years later, on August 24, 1946, Justice McReynolds, age eighty-four, died at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.
Justice Robert H. Jackson did not serve on the Supreme Court with Justice McReynolds—Jackson was appointed to the Court in July 1941, six months after McReynolds retired.
But McReynolds had been one of the Justices before whom lawyer Robert Jackson had argued in every one of his dozens of Supreme Court cases. They had a few friendly moments during those arguments. Sometimes, if not often, advocate Jackson even won Justice McReynolds’s vote.
When Justice McReynolds died in August 1946, Justice Jackson was in Washington, D.C., home just a few weeks from prosecuting accused Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg. Jackson was working that August in his Supreme Court chambers, catching up on the year of Court work that he had missed because of his Nuremberg assignment and preparing for the Court term that would begin in two months.
Justice Jackson and every Justice surely learned of McReynolds’s death. But I have found no indication that any Justice, or the Court as an institution, issued a public statement regarding McReynolds’s passing.
Justice McReynolds had, in accordance with his wishes, no Washington funeral.
McReynolds’s body was shipped from Washington by train to his hometown, Elkton, in Todd County in southwestern Kentucky. McReynolds was a lifelong bachelor. He had no family in Washington. The Supreme Court’s Marshal, Thomas E. Waggaman, accompanied the body on the train journey to Elkton, Kentucky.
On Thursday morning, August 29, 1946, the body lay in state in Elkton’s Baptist Church.
That afternoon, the church was the site of a four-minute funeral.
McReynolds’s plastic casket was covered by a blanket of red roses and white gladioli, sent by the Justices of the Supreme Court.
After the funeral, the casket was driven to nearby Glenwood Cemetery.
Ignoring McReynolds’s request for no flowers, two truckloads of them were delivered. One flower arrangement came with a card from retired Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes.
McReynolds’s remains then were buried in his family’s cemetery plot.
James McReynolds’s closest relative who was present at his funeral and burial was his brother, Robert Phillips McReynolds, a doctor who lived in Los Angeles.
A Kentucky newspaper reported that on this occasion, Dr. McReynolds stayed alone in the family home on Elkton’s South Main Street. Dr. McReynolds’s father, also a medical doctor, had built this brick house—it had been built for him—around 1860. James Clark McReynolds, the future Justice, had been born there in 1862.
In adulthood, Robert and James McReynolds spent two weeks together in Elkton each summer, staying in their boyhood home (which today is a national historic site).
During the rest of each year, according to the August 1946 Kentucky newspaper story, “75-year-old Jim Smith, an old family servant who had been with the McReynolds[’s] since [Mr. Smith] was 12, looked after the house and grounds.”
The newspaper did not report Mr. Smith’s race.
I am sure that most readers understood that this elderly man who had been a McReynolds family “servant” since his 1880s boyhood was Black.
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If you wish to read more about Justice McReynolds, I recommend:
For information about places in Todd County, Kentucky, including the McReynolds House, that are on the National Register of Historic Places, click here.
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Newspaper article:
Brief Services for McReynolds; Elkton Business Stops For Justice’s Rites, Kentucky New Era (Hopkinsville, KY), Aug. 30, 1946, pp. 1, 10.
Thanks to Marley Arzonico for research assistance.
Last month, as in many previous summers, I had the opportunity to teach in Europe in Creighton University’s program “From Nuremberg to The Hague (N2H).”
Early in the program, a U.S. law student, Alannah Lockitt, told me that she had a podcast and wanted to interview me about Justice Robert H. Jackson and the 1945-1946 Nuremberg trial.
A few days later, when we were in Nuremberg, Germany, I gave a classroom lecture on Jackson and Nuremberg.
Ms. Lockitt then interviewed me for about twenty-five minutes, about topics including:
With thanks to Alannah Lockitt, here is the clickable link to her podcast video on YouTube:
Two days ago, on Monday, July 27, 2026, Michael R. Dreeben, a former Deputy Solicitor General of the United States and now a law professor, delivered Chautauqua Institution’s 22nd annual Robert H. Jackson Lecture on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Professor Dreeben’s lecture was excellent and rich. It contrasted the views of equality of persons under the U.S. Constitution that the Supreme Court expressed in three decisions in its current Term:
Dreeben also compared today’s Supreme Court interpretations of equality with Justice Robert H. Jackson’s 1943 opinion for the Court in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, which held that West Virginia’s law compelling public schoolchildren to salute the U.S. flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional.
Click here to watch, after a Chautauqua welcome and my introduction, Michael Dreeben’s Jackson Lecture:
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Michael Dreeben is a distinguished lecturer from government at Georgetown University Law Center, a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, and an adjunct professor at American University Washington College of Law.
From 1988-2019, Dreeben served in the Office of Solicitor General in the U.S. Department of Justice, first as an Assistant to the Solicitor General and then as a Deputy Solicitor General.
As Deputy Solicitor General from 1994 to 2019, Dreeben supervised the criminal docket for the United States in the U.S. Supreme Court. Dreeben has argued 109 Supreme Court cases on behalf of the United States and private clients. He has briefed hundreds more. He also argued cases in every regional federal court of appeals, including en banc cases in ten circuits. During the summer of 2006, he served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Maryland.
From 2017-2019, Dreeben was detailed to serve as counselor to Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and obstruction of justice.
In 2023, Dreeben returned to the Department of Justice to serve as counselor to Special Counsel Jack Smith, where he represented the United States on brief and in argument in Trump v. United States on the question whether a former president has immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts.
During his tenure in the Solicitor General’s office, Dreeben argued many landmark cases in criminal law and procedure. These include cases involving hate crimes and the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment rights in the internet age, cases involving public corruption and private fraud, and the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause.
Dreeben received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a master’s degree in history from the University of Chicago, and his law degree from Duke University, where he served as an articles editor on the Duke Law Journal. He served as a law clerk to the honorable Jerre S. Williams of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He has taught at Harvard Law School, Duke Law School, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has published articles and posts on the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice. His most recent essays are “Robert Jackson’s The Federal Prosecutor Revisited,” in the Harvard Law Review Forum (2026) (click here), and “Looking Back at Humphrey’s Executor,” on the Just Security blog (click here).
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The Jackson Lecture at Chautauqua Institution is a leading annual consideration of the Supreme Court of the United States, occurring in the weeks following the completion of the Court’s annual Term.
Justice Robert H. Jackson, who served on the Court from 1941-1954, was a lifelong Chautauqua Institution attendee and one of its prominent lecturers. He lived and practiced law for twenty years in Jamestown, New York, which is located on Chautauqua Lake near Chautauqua Institution and has been, since 2001, site of the Robert H. Jackson Center.
Chautauqua Institution’s twenty-two Jackson Lecturers have been:
The post-World War II trial before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg of the principal Nazi war criminals began on November 20, 1945.
U.S. Chief of Counsel Robert H. Jackson delivered his opening statement the next day.
The trial then proceeded, over many months, with each of the prosecuting nations presenting its case. The evidence included documents, witnesses, and film.
Then each of the twenty-two individual defendants had, through counsel, the opportunity to present his defense, including calling witnesses and, in most instances, the defendant himself deciding to testify (and then being cross-examined).
In Summer 1946, the Nuremberg trial approached its conclusion.
In July, each chief prosecutor presented a closing statement.
Justice Robert H. Jackson delivered his closing statement, which lasted about two hours, on Friday, July 26, 1946—eighty years ago this weekend.
*****
Justice Jackson’s Nuremberg trial closing statement was not filmed.
Although spots, totaling dozens of hours, of the nine-month-long IMT Nuremberg trial were filmed, the full trial was not filmed.
I am sure that the complexities of motion picture recording in 1945-1946, especially in war-devastated Europe—the need for fulltime cameramen and sufficient equipment, and then the costs and logistics of transporting and developing film, and then of printing, copying, and distributing movies—were factors in this decision, to the extent that anyone ever formally decided not to film very much of the trial.
I have found no evidence that preserving gavel-to-gavel Nuremberg trial film for history was considered seriously.
But…
The full Nuremberg trial was audio-recorded.
After the trial, those audio recordings were transported to The Peace Palace in The Hague, The Netherlands.
The Nuremberg trial audio recordings were preserved there.
Many decades later, they were digitized and uploaded to the Internet.
Here, on the Robert H. Jackson Center’s website, are organized links to the locations, on its YouTube channel, of the full Nuremberg trial audio:
https://www.roberthjackson.org/resource/nuremberg-trial-video/
Here is the link to audio of Justice Jackson’s July 26, 1946, closing statement:
I suggest that, when time permits, you listen to Jackson’s closing in full.
You can click “CC” on YouTube to produce Closed Captions (which are quite accurate).
You also can speed up the audio, if that’s your preference.
I also suggest that you, while listening, because you won’t miss any movie footage, read along in the official Nuremberg trial July 26 transcript. It is online here:
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/07-26-46.asp
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There is some film of Justice Jackson delivering part of his closing statement. That film—a brief segment—is here:
When you view it closely, you will see that Jackson is dressed not for trial, but for a formal dinner, and that he is speaking with no other prosecutors seated in the chairs behind him.
Back on July 26, 1946, after Jackson had delivered his closing statement, someone discovered that the effort to film a portion of it had failed—there was no film that could become newsreel movie footage (and a resource for history).
So Jackson, on that evening or the next, well-dressed and on his way to a farewell dinner, went to empty Courtroom 600 in Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice and reenacted, for the camera, a portion of his closing statement.
It is not “the real thing.”
It is real, viewable Jackson speaking in July 1946 some of his Nuremberg trial closing words.
They all bear close listening and continuing study.
This is a reprise posting of the essay below. It seems to be on point given the extreme heat, rain, lightning storms, and temporary evening evacuation of the National Mall that were parts of this Fourth of July in Washington, D.C.
The Jackson List also has many thousands of new subscribers and other readers since I last posted some of what follows. Thank you!
**N.B. To read hundreds of past Jackson List essays, visit the searchable archive site: https://thejacksonlist.com/.**
So for your reading on this day after Independence Day, here is the speech that U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Jackson was supposed to deliver in person to a big crowd on the National Mall. Due to bad weather, he delivered it instead in a Washington radio studio.
Three weeks earlier, on June 12, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had nominated Robert Jackson to be an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
On June 30, a U.S. Senate subcommittee completed four days of hearings on Jackson’s nomination. The Senate Judiciary Committee then voted, unanimously, its approval.
Attorney General Jackson’s 1941 Fourth of July speech was and is many things, including an important lesson in U.S. history, an explication of the 1776 U.S. Declaration of Independence, and a powerful statement about democracy as a universal ideal.
In July 1941, Jackson was addressing the international situation and the coming U.S. involvement in world war with fascism. New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who was serving concurrently as FDR’s director of the national Office of Civilian Defense, had recruited Jackson to give this speech.
Jackson was supposed to deliver this speech at the Washington Monument as part of the capital’s Independence Day observance. The speech also was to be broadcast live on nationwide radio.
Washington’s summer weather, however, intervened. Pouring rain caused the Fourth of July events that were scheduled to occur on the Mall—a Marine Band concert; a procession of flags and colors carried by representatives of 300 veterans’ and other patriotic, fraternal and civic organizations; Jackson’s speech; and fireworks—to be canceled (for a second straight year).
So Jackson delivered his speech that evening in a Washington radio studio.
The speech was broadcast nationwide over Mutual’s radio network, and also recorded.
When July 5 brought better weather, the events on the Mall were rescheduled. That evening, Jackson’s recorded speech was played for the crowd before the fireworks flew.
On Monday, July 7, the U.S. Senate confirmed by voice vote Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
On Friday, July 11, at the White House, President Roosevelt signed and handed to Jackson his judicial commission. The Clerk of the Supreme Court then administered the constitutional oath to Jackson. He thus was appointed the 84th Supreme Court Justice in U.S. history.
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Independence Day address
By Robert H. Jackson
Attorney General of the United States
Washington, D.C.
July 4, 1941
For nearly two years now many of us have been bewildered by the headlong course of events in Europe and not a few of us have been confused as to the course of wisdom at home. We have seen a nation which twenty years ago had been vanquished, rise up with a ferocity seldom seen in the history of mankind. We have seen vaunted armies smashed as if they were so much paper. We have seen Europe overrun and England placed in grave danger. We have seen the dictator idea spread in the world. At first its two principal proponents, communism and fascism, appeared to be mortal enemies. Then, one day, they turned up as partners. Now they battle each other.
For nearly two years Americans have been asking each other which way safety and security lie. We have pondered the problem weighing risk against risk and danger against danger. Now at last, on this Fourth of July in 1941, the truth of our situation is coming home with increasing clarity to all Americans. We are learning the overwhelming fact that now, as in 1776, our nation, together with our sister Republics on this hemisphere, faces a preponderantly hostile and undemocratic world. Now, as in 1776, we can turn to the Declaration of Independence for the principles which should guide our action.
You are lifted and inspired, like generations before you, by the majestic cadence of the boldest, the noblest, and best known of all American writings. The Declaration of Independence speaks strong doctrine in plain words. It is the world’s master indictment of oppression. The fervor of its denunciation haunts and challenges dictators everywhere and in every field of life.
But the Declaration of Independence does not stop with mere denials and negations. It sets forth great affirmations as to the permissible foundations of power and political leadership among free men. It lays down a fighting faith in the rights of man — merely as man — a faith to die by if need be, or even more bravely to live by. It impresses upon all political power the high obligation of trusteeship. It established an accountability by the governing few to the governed many. That is why men abroad who wield dictatorial powers over subject peoples would silence the reading of the Declaration of Independence, would tear all mention of it from the record, and torture all recollection of it out of the minds of men. Even at home there are some who hope it will not be read too loudly.
But the masses of warm-hearted people are reared on its strong doctrines of equality and human rights. It has exceeded every other modern pronouncement in its profound influence upon our lives, our culture, and our relations to the world. When the Constitution of the United States was adopted, its foundations were laid in the democratic idealism of the Declaration. It has been the inspiration for every later recognition of broadened human rights and for the extension of justice and security to all men. We do not claim to have reached a perfect fulfillment of its high principles. But we have achieved the nearest approach among all the nations to a classless society, to equality of rights, and to a fair distribution of opportunity and prosperity. Whenever we reproach our own imperfections, as we ought often to do, we must not forget that our shortcomings are visible only when measured against our ideals, never when put beside the practical living conditions of the rest of the world. We have by Constitution, by legislation, and by judicial decision translated the Declaration out of the language of abstract philosophy into the idiom of everyday living. We have validated democratic principles by our success.
America’s position in the society of nations is unavoidably that of a champion of the freedoms. The reason is aptly stated by [Cornell University history professor] Carl Becker, who says:
In the Declaration the foundation of the United States is indissolubly associated with a theory of politics, a philosophy of human rights, which is valid, if at all, not for Americans only, but for all men.
When our national success demonstrated that freedom is an attainable goal, we made it the ultimate goal of all people everywhere. The four freedoms are not local or transient incidents; they are universal and timeless principles if they are valid at all. A blow against their existence in Europe is a blow at their validity everywhere. On the other hand, the example of a great and powerful people governed by their own consent through lawmakers of their free choice is a standing incitement to overturn tyranny anywhere. Malevolent conquests by dictators are silently undermined by our confession of faith in democracy as stated in the Declaration. That carries hope to subject peoples in whom there would otherwise be a noble, but unavailing, fortitude. Overridden countries find a bid to insurrection in its assertion of the right of the people to alter or abolish an existing government that is destructive of life, liberty, and happiness. They read words of invitation in its statement of their right to “institute new Government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” No wonder the Declaration of Independence is the nightmare of conquerors.
Some will say that the decision faced by the patriots of 1776 was an easier one than ours, since they had nothing to lose but their intolerable situation. Our task, some will argue, is to protect rather than to win our freedom and that for that reason we should be cautious.
But if the patriots of 1776 risked little by action, we risk much by indifference. Today we risk the loss of a physical, cultural and spiritual heritage of freedom far beyond the most inspired visions of the leaders of ’76. And the more of the world that ceases to be democratic, the greater our risk will be. We do not need to be imprudent or foolhardy, but we should recognize that no amount of cautious behavior, no amount of polite talk will earn for us the friendship and goodwill of dictator systems. Ultimately we must come to the day when we shall face their threats and their enmity for no other reason than that we persist in living the kind of life we live.
One fact emerges clear above all others. We Americans cannot cease to be the kind of people we are, we cannot cease to live the kind of life we live. We are not the kind of people the dictators will ever want in the world. They will never have any use for our kind of life, nor we for theirs.
Every American knows now, as he knew it in 1776, that there is nothing for him in that way of life.
There are those who shrink from the risks of standing for a forthright, practical application of democracy. They point to the striking power and efficiency of foes abroad. But the enemies of American democracy today cannot begin to assemble a force so relatively powerful and so encircling as were its foes that day when the signers of the Declaration pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in its support. The most strategic points in our own country were then in possession of the King’s armies. Canada was a base for his operations. Florida, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the mouth of the Mississippi were occupied by forces of Spanish monarchy — no lover of democracy. And the unsolved problem of the colonies along their whole precarious frontier was the Indian. American democracy then had no navy, only an empty treasury. Its army was composed of untrained volunteer backwoodsmen who could not get shoes, clothing, or substantial arms to fight the invading British regulars. There was no national unity. There were cabals against Washington, a fifth column of Royalists was powerful and respectable, and the states were jealous rivals who did not act, nor even think, as a unit. But in such an hour our forefathers who believed in freedom did not fear to stand alone and to become, as they continued for many years to be, the world’s only real democracy. But the American forces had power — the unseen power of the earnest individual — the individual with what Mr. Justice Holmes called “fire in his belly.” Only when these fires go out need we fear the lawless forces of dictatorship. Democracy’s strength is in man-to-man measure. None other draws such initiative from its way of life, none invents, and none had so generally and fully mastered in its daily life the technique of handling modern machine transport and production. And we dwell among resources as incredible as acres of diamonds.
But there is at home and abroad an anti-democratic influence, even more cynical and sinister and dangerous than Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin combined. I refer to those who think democracy is a fair weather ideal — to guide us in soft times — but that when the going is tough we cannot save it without losing it. This doctrine has every base quality of fascism without either its candor or courage. Let us in America never forget that liberties trampled by conquest may be regained, but liberties abandoned by an indifferent people are never recovered. Nor are they deserved.
Let us not forget the example of our forefathers. They, too, heard the argument that time of external danger was no time to advance freedoms. But their answer was to give liberty a new birth not only in the midst of a war but in the very darkest hours of that war, because they knew that what wins struggles are the last ounces of endurance and the reserves of power that come to the common run of men on fire for a cause. Such men do not count costs nor watch the clock. We must keep our freedoms, keep them in face of foreign dangers even more tenaciously and jealously than in calmer times — keep them because it is our liberty that lifts our cause above material ends and anchors our efforts in timeless things. We know that in the unfolding book of destiny, just as in the closed book of history, it is written that tyranny and oppression bring forth their own downfall and that the irresistible moral forces of the world march always on the side of resolute men when freedom is their goal. We know that the spiritual strength and the moral power of our democratic tradition, authenticated by a century and a half of progress, will not long yield the field anywhere in the world despite the temporary devastations by enemies of the fundamental philosophy of our Declaration of Independence. As Kipling has said:
Though all we knew depart,
The old commandments stand: –
“In courage keep your heart,
In strength lift up your hand.”
In 1935 and 1936, Robert H. Jackson, Assistant General Counsel heading the Bureau of Internal Revenue in the United States Treasury Department, led the U.S. government team that litigated a major tax collection case against Andrew W. Mellon, a former Secretary of the Treasury.
In this civil case, the government claimed that Mr. Mellon owed over $3,000,000 in unpaid personal income taxes plus penalties due for tax year 1931.
Mr. Mellon claimed that that was all wrong, and in fact that he had overpaid his taxes for 1931, entitling him to a significant refund.
The Mellon case was tried, in Pittsburgh and in Washington, D.C., before a U.S. court, the Board of Tax Appeals (BTA).
In early 1936, while the Mellon case was in progress, Robert Jackson moved on from Treasury. President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated Jackson and the Senate confirmed his appointment to serve as Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Attorney General Homer S. Cummings then assigned Jackson to head DOJ’s Tax Division.
Jackson, while handling his new DOJ work in 1936, also continued to represent the U.S. as chief counsel in the Mellon case.
For Jackson, for more than a year start to finish, Mellon was a long, hard, hotly contested, demanding, national-press-attention-attracting litigation. He was committed to seeing it through.
By mid-1936, the Mellon case parties had completed the trial, including witness examinations, briefing, and oral arguments. The BTA had begun deliberating and preparing to write its decision.
In June 1936, Jackson received, at his DOJ office, thank you letters from his two former bosses at Treasury, General Counsel Herman Oliphant and Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
These letters, from Jackson’s former Treasury Department and continuing Mellon case bosses—two men who also were his friends—meant a lot to Jackson. He wrote back to each, actually ninety years ago today, expressing his thanks for their support throughout the Mellon case.
Jackson also, as Secretary Morgenthau had requested, conveyed Morgenthau’s thanks to the Bureau of Internal Revenue Mellon investigation and trial team.
Jackson did this by sending Morgenthau’s letter, physically, back to the Treasury Department. He sent it to his former Bureau of Internal Revenue secretary Mrs. Grace M. Stewart, instructing her to share it with the Bureau personnel who had worked with Jackson on Mellon. Jackson, their boss, wanted them to see on paper the gratitude of their big boss.
It mattered to them—they included David Shelton, Frederick R. Shearer, and Edward L. Updike—“a great deal.”
Shelton, returning the Morgenthau letter to Mrs. Stewart for her to return to Jackson at DOJ, asked her to convey that message. She did so, by sending to Jackson the note from Shelton along with the original Morgenthau letter.
Jackson, closing the loop, made it a point to tell Morgenthau that his Bureau of Internal Revenue Mellon case team had seen and appreciated his letter.
(And, oh, yes, although it took more years and was complicated, the U.S. did win the Mellon case.)
I am very pleased to report that Michael R. Dreeben will give Chautauqua Institution’s 22nd annual Robert H. Jackson Lecture on the Supreme Court of the United States, on Monday, July 27, 2026, at 3:30 p.m.
Michael Dreeben is a distinguished lecturer from government at Georgetown University Law Center and an adjunct professor at American University Washington College of Law. From 1988-2019, Dreeben served in the Office of Solicitor General in the U.S. Department of Justice, first as an Assistant to the Solicitor General and then as a Deputy Solicitor General. As Deputy Solicitor General from 1994 to 2019, Dreeben supervised the criminal docket for the United States in the U.S. Supreme Court. Dreeben has argued 109 Supreme Court cases on behalf of the United States and private clients. He has briefed hundreds more. He also argued cases in every regional federal court of appeals, including en banc cases in ten circuits. During the summer of 2006, he served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Maryland.
From 2017-2019, Dreeben was detailed to serve as counselor to Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and obstruction of justice.
In 2023, Dreeben returned to the Department of Justice to serve as counselor to Special Counsel Jack Smith, where he represented the United States on brief and in argument in Trump v. United States on the question whether a former president has immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts.
During his tenure in the Solicitor General’s office, Dreeben argued many landmark cases in criminal law and procedure. These include cases involving hate crimes and the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment rights in the internet age, cases involving public corruption and private fraud, and the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause.
Dreeben received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a master’s degree in history from the University of Chicago, and his law degree from Duke University, where he served as an articles editor on the Duke Law Journal. He served as a law clerk to the honorable Jerre S. Williams of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He has taught at Harvard Law School, Duke Law School, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has published articles and posts on the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice. His most recent essays are “Robert Jackson’s The Federal Prosecutor Revisited,” in the Harvard Law Review Forum (2026) (click here), and “Looking Back at Humphrey’s Executor,” on the Just Security blog (click here).
The Jackson Lecture at Chautauqua Institution is a leading annual consideration of the Supreme Court of the United States, occurring in the weeks following the completion of the Court’s annual Term. Justice Robert H. Jackson, who served on the Court from 1941-1954, was a lifelong Chautauqua Institution attendee and one of its prominent lecturers. He lived and practiced law for twenty years in Jamestown, New York, which is located on Chautauqua Lake near Chautauqua Institution and is the site of the Robert H. Jackson Center.
**For information on attending Michael Dreeben’s Jackson Lecture on July 27, click here**: https://www.chq.org/event/the-22nd-annual-robert-h-jackson-lecture-on-the-supreme-court-of-the-united-states-michael-dreeben/
Attending the lecture requires a Chautauqua Institution gate pass. Please allow sufficient time for parking and entering the grounds.
In past years, Chautauqua’s Jackson Lecturers have been:
For video of 2005-2017 Jackson Lectures and interviews with the lecturers during their visits to Chautauqua Institution, click here: https://accesschautauquacountytv.org/shows/robertHJacksonCenterChautauquaLectures
For video of more recent Jackson lecturers, click the links below:
Archibald MacLeish was born on this date, May 7, in 1892 in Glencoe, Illinois. He later studied at Yale University, served in the military during World War I, studied at Harvard Law School, and practiced law. He became a literary giant and also a senior United States government official. He was a friend of many, including his near-exact contemporary Robert H. Jackson.
This essay is a glimpse of MacLeish and Jackson in Spring 1941. At that time, both lived in Washington, D.C. MacLeish was the Librarian of Congress and Jackson was the Attorney General of the United States. Jackson and MacLeish saw each other regularly, including socially. They, and really most senior U.S. officials, were working then on issues related to Nazi Germany’s military aggression in Europe and Germany’s threats to countries that still were free, including the U.S.
On Thursday, April 3, 1941, both participated in a major dinner and media event at the Hotel Astor in New York City. The dinner was hosted by the Common Council for American Unity, an organization that urged exactly that. One thousand people attended.
The U.S. First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, who was honorary chair of the Council’s national committee, presided. After the national anthem and words from the dinner chair, she gave introductory remarks, which were broadcast on local radio.
Many speakers, each representing a U.S. ethnic, racial, or immigrant group or a political perspective, followed Mrs. Roosevelt. They included M.F. Wegrzynek (of Polish ancestry), Edward Corsi (Italian), Elmer A. Carter (Black), Louis Adamic (Yugoslavian), and U.S. Senator Harold H. Burton (R.-Ohio).
Attorney General Jackson then spoke, to the dinner crowd and also over radio.
Aspects of Jackson’s speech are, to my eyes, jarring. It was of its moment, far from comprehending the enormity of Nazi power and crimes. It focused significantly on U.S. Department of Justice domestic law enforcement concerns regarding immigrants, including risks that some were Hitler loyalists and security threats.
Other passages in Jackson’s speech were bravely inclusive. He urged trust in immigrants and extolled their American-ness. (A link to the speech is below.)
After Jackson, finally, came MacLeish’s turn to speak. He titled his speech, “New Land: New World.” It drove home the message of the evening—that Americans, including diverse newcomers, were a united people.
The next week, Attorney General Jackson, back at the Department of Justice, dictated a letter to MacLeish and mailed it to his Georgetown home, in an envelope addressed to his wife, Ada.
I am still running down the full text of MacLeish’s New York City remarks.
In the meantime, here is a link to Jackson’s speech text:
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/ag/legacy/2011/09/16/04-03-1941.pdf
And here is biographical information on MacLeish:
Today in History – May 7 | Library of Congress
Happy Birthday, Archie!
Harlan Fiske Stone was a New Hampshire native who became a New York City lawyer. In 1898, he began to teach at Columbia University’s law school. He served as its Dean from 1910-1923. In 1924, he was appointed United State Attorney General. In 1925, he was appointed an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1941, he was appointed Chief Justice of the United States.
Nearly five years later, on Monday, April 22, 1946—eighty years ago today—Chief Justice Stone, age 73, went to the Supreme Court building to preside at the Court’s April session; it had been adjourned for the previous three weeks. He was in a good mood and appeared to be in good health.
The Justices took the bench at noon. They were only eight. And Justice Harold H. Burton, the junior justice, was still a rookie—he had been commissioned just before the Court term had begun the previous October.
Justice Robert H. Jackson was absent, as he had been for the whole term. He was serving as U.S. chief prosecutor in Nuremberg of Nazi war criminals.
On that April 22, after the Justices took the bench at noon, Chief Justice Stone admitted dozens of attorneys to practice before the Court.
He then announced with regret the recent death of the widow of the late Justice George Sutherland.
Stone then listened to Justice Wiley Rutledge read his opinion for the Court in a first case, Seas Shipping Company v. Sieracki. Stone then read his dissent therefrom.
Chief Justice Stone listened to Justice William O. Douglas read his opinion for the Court in a second case, Girouard v. United States. Then Stone read his dissent from it.
Chief Justice Stone then listened as colleagues read opinions in five other cases.
Shortly before the Justices were to recess for lunch at 2:00 p.m., after Justice Stanley Reed had finished reading an opinion, Chief Justice Stone was visibly stricken with a health problem. He first sat silent, fingering papers in front of him. Then he muttered something about a case being stayed.
The Justices abruptly rose to recess. Chief Justice Stone left the bench walking, on the arms of Justice Hugo L. Black and Justice Reed, who sat on the bench next to the Chief Justice.
The Chief Justice was taken to his nearby chambers. A doctor was called, and he diagnosed the problem as indigestion.
The Court’s marshal, Thomas E. Waggaman, communicated that to Justice Black, the senior Associate Justice.
At 2:30 p.m., the seven Associate Justices returned to the bench. Justice Black presided.
The Court announced four more decisions. Justice Black announced three that had been written by Chief Justice Stone.
During this session, Stone’s law clerk Eugene Nickerson sent a note to Justice Black on the bench, advising him that Chief Justice Stone “seems fine” and had been transported, by ambulance, to his home in northwest Washington.
Chief Justice Stone was not fine. He never awakened. He died at 6:45 p.m. The cause was reported to be a cerebral hemorrhage.
The next day, in Nuremberg, Justice Jackson learned of Stone’s death.
They had been acquainted and then friends from Jackson’s 1934 arrival in Washington until he joined the Court in 1941, filling Stone’s associate justice seat as he became Chief Justice. Then they were compatible, even close, colleagues.
Yes, Chief Justice Stone had been irked in May 1945 to learn that Jackson had, without consulting Stone, accepted President Truman’s request to serve as U.S. chief prosecutor of the principal Nazi war criminals.
Into early 1946, as Jackson’s absence became prolonged and the Court privately was dividing 4-4 in many cases, Stone was unhappy about the situation.
But Stone and Jackson stayed in contact. Stone instructed Jackson that winter to stay put in Nuremberg until his work there was done. They were, at the time of Stone’s death, on good terms.
In Nuremberg on the afternoon of April 23, 1946, International Military Tribunal chief judge Geoffrey Lawrence of the United Kingdom announced Chief Justice Stone’s death.
Lord Lawrence then asked Justice Jackson if he would like to speak. He did, and he extemporaneously paid this tribute to his late colleague:
May it please the Tribunal:
It is not only because he was the head of the judicial system of the United States that the news of the passing of Chief Justice Stone brings sadness to every American heart in Nuremberg, but because he was the personal friend of so many of us. He had a rare capacity for personal friendship. No one was more kind to, and thoughtful of, the younger men who from time to time came to Washington, and they found in him a guide, philosopher, and friend.
Now, I know that not only do I feel the loss of a personal friend but that the American representatives on the Tribunal, Mr. [Francis] Biddle and Judge [John J.] Parker, feel the same way, and many of the younger men on the staff had intimate contact with the Chief Justice which you might not expect if you had not known Harlan Stone.
As Attorney General he took over the Department of Justice at one of its most difficult periods and imparted to it the impress of his integrity, an impress which stayed with it and was traditional in the Department, as we well know.
As a Justice of the Court he was a forward-looking man, open-minded, always patient to hear the arguments of both sides and to arrive at his decision with that complete disinterestedness and detachment which is characteristic of the just judge. He presided with great fairness and with kindness to his associates and to those who appeared before him.
It is the passing of a man who exemplified in public life those sturdy qualities which we have come to associate with the New Englander.
The consolation of his friends lies in this: He died exactly as he would have chosen to die, in full possession of his faculties and in the discharge of his duties.
I express great appreciation that this Tribunal has seen fit to take note of his passing and to allow us to record on behalf of the American Bar our appreciation of his talents and character.
Harvard Law School professor Felix Frankfurter first met Robert H. Jackson, Assistant General Counsel in the United States Treasury Department’s Bureau of Internal Revenue, at a White House meeting on June 16, 1935. They and others were working then with President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the message that he soon would send to Congress, proposing new, improved U.S. tax laws.
Jackson and Frankfurter hit it off—this meeting was the start of what became a close friendship, especially after Frankfurter was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1939 and Jackson joined him there two years later.
In the meantime, Professor Frankfurter followed, and he probably encouraged President Roosevelt’s enthusiasm to advance, Jackson’s career in government.
In late 1935, the President directed Treasury to detail Jackson to the Securities and Exchange Commission, to take the point in federal court litigation defending, ultimately successfully, the constitutionality of a major new law, the Public Utility Holding Company Act.
In February 1936, President Roosevelt nominated and the Senate confirmed Jackson to his first position in the U.S. Department of Justice, Assistant Attorney General.
The U.S. Attorney General, Homer S. Cummings, then assigned Jackson to head DOJ’s Tax Division.
Professor Frankfurter of course knew of Jackson’s new appointment.
After some delay (due to a busy academic semester?), Frankfurter wrote Jackson a congratulatory letter:
8 April 36
Dear Robert Jackson
This is a too long
delayed word of congra-
tulations to Uncle Sam—if
one of his citizens can
indulge in such tall talk—
on acquiring you as
one of the leading law
officers, and beyond the
confines where you per-
formed so admirably.
More + more, policy will
depend on administration,
and adjudication is the
reliance of both, and—
making all discounts
for judicial limitations
and oddities—effective
advocacy (including
strategy and tactics in
the conduct of litigation)
is a major factor in the
results of adjudication.And so, I rejoice
that you are at Justice,
and wish you all the
satisfaction that I
know is in store for you.Very sincerely,
Felix Frankfurter
Frankfurter’s letter, scrawled by hand, probably quickly, is a little old-world in its language.
His main point, however, is clear and still true: It is a good development for the United States when the U.S. Department of Justice is staffed, in its attorney ranks and up through its leadership, by our best.
