Robert Jackson(1892-1954)
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.
He returned to the US in 1946 and resumed his duties at the Supreme Court. He died in Washington, DC, on October 9, 1954.
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