…on for the Court in the no-compelled-flag-salute case, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. It includes this paragraph: Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good as well as by evil men. Nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon but at other times and places the ends have been racial or territorial security, support of a dynasty or r…

…on landmarks (Sweatt v. Painter; McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents; Brown v. Board of Education). Thurgood Marshall was one of the Supreme Court advocates who Robert Jackson admired, greatly. Marshall’s colleague Robert Carter told me that Justice Jackson was consistently an NAACP friend on the bench—by which Carter meant someone with a clean heart and an open mind. Robert Jackson would detest any race-based thought that Ketanji Jackson does not…

…pinions for the Court in Wickard v. Filburn (1942) and West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943). John Costelloe also was a talented photographer. During his Department of Justice and Supreme Court clerkship years, he used his camera around Washington. Here are two samples of his work: a photograph of his desk in Jackson’s Supreme Court chambers, and a nighttime photograph of the Tidal Basin and the Jefferson Memorial. Costelloe al…

…over three days, the first round of oral arguments in the five cases—Brown v. Board of Education and its companion cases—that challenged the constitutionality of States and the District of Columbia racially segregating public school children. During those months, Justice Jackson kept his law clerks Cronson and Rehnquist busy. They wrote memoranda on petitions seeking Court review, performed research, and read and commented on Jackson draft opinion…