Robert Jackson

Cast

Born

February 13, 1892 · Spring Creek, Pennsylvania, USA

Died

October 9, 1954

Birth name

Robert Houghwout Jackson

US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was born in Spring Creek, Pennsylvania, in 1892. He graduated from Albany (NY) Law School and was admitted to the New York State bar in 1913,. setting up a practice in Jamestown, NY. He became a municipal attorney for several Jamestown government agencies. He also got involved in the banking business, and was responsible for merging three local banks into one and becoming a director of the new bank. He served on a state judicial commission, and his work there caught the attention of Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt; after Roosevelt's election to the US Presidency, he appointed Jackson as General Counsel for the Internal Revenue Service in 1934. He also served as a special counsel to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), where he was responsible for the investigation and prosecution of corporations violating antitrust laws. He moved to the US Department of Justice in 1936 as assistant attorney general of the Antitrust Division, then solicitor general and in 1940 he was appointed US Attorney General. The next year he was named by President Roosevelt as an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court. In 1945 he was appointed by President Harry S. Truman to the International Military Tribual as the chief US prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials of Nazi officials of the former regime of Adolf Hitler. He conducted the prosecution of such infamous Nazis as Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Julius Streicher, and all were convicted of the charges against them. He returned to the US in 1946 and resumed his duties at the Supreme Court. He died in Washington, DC, on October 9, 1954.