Address by Eugene C. Gerhart, Esq.
First Annual Robert H. Jackson Symposium
Jamestown, New York
Law Day, May 1, 2001
It is a great honor to be here in your hometown to pay our mutual respects to one of America’s greatest lawyers, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson. Without hesitation I regard him as one of America’s outstanding advocates. A native of Spring Creek, Pennsylvania, educated in Frewsburg and Jamestown, New York, he grew up to be a man that all Americans can admire. Although he never graduated from law school or from college, he rose to some of the highest offices of this land because he worked, because he was honest and intelligent, and because he respected his fellow men.
As a lawyer he was a wise counselor. Like other wise counselors he had to be a trial lawyer, an advocate as we call him, a true country lawyer of whom we can all be proud. He not only was active in his local Bar in this area and later in our nation’s capital, but he also held public office, helped by his long-time friend, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Counsel to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, he soon became Solicitor General. Louis Brandeis said that Jackson should be Solicitor General for life after he heard him argue several cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. He subsequently became Attorney General of the United States and advisor to the President. Later, as a Supreme Court Justice of the United States, Jackson voted in the opposite way on an opinion that he had given to the President earlier as Attorney General. With his wonderful smile and disarming congeniality, he said, “I see no reason why I should be consciously wrong today because I was unconsciously wrong yesterday.”
He had an almost religious reverence for law and all that it means to all
of us. When it was time to dedicate the Law Window at our National Cathedral
in Washington, D.C., Robert H. Jackson was chosen for that task. When it was
time to dedicate the American Bar Association Center in Chicago, Robert H.
Jackson was chosen to give the dedicatory address.
Near the end of World War II many lawyers, judges and others decided to hold
accountable to the public and to the world the Nazi war leaders who committed
heinous crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg Trials were set up. England,
France, Russia and the United States were in control of those trials. They
wanted to set a precedent that would last for ages to come.
England, France and Russia chose top talent from their legal ranks to serve on the Court as judges and also as prosecutors. It was clear that America had to choose a man of equal rank to be the leading prosecutor for the United States. Your fellow townsman, Justice Robert H. Jackson of the United States Supreme Court, was selected to be America’s Advocate at the Nuremberg Trials. Justice Jackson accepted his appointment and his record at Nuremberg was outstanding. He regarded the Nuremberg Trials as the high point of his career. If man is going to live in peace then he must live, as Kipling said, “by no man’s leave underneath the law.” That law had to be fair; that law had to be honest; that law had to be accepted. Justice Jackson, as Nuremberg prosecutor, fulfilled every one of those requirements.
Many of you have heard of John W. Davis of New York City, a nominee for President
in 1924 who was an outstanding advocate before the Supreme Court of the United
States. When I asked him to assess Justice Jackson’s role at Nuremberg,
he wrote me, and I have sent you a copy of his reply. He wrote in part that
“I thought his closing address at Nuremberg was one of the finest I
have read.”
A young man said to Lincoln that he wanted to become a lawyer but he didn’t
think he could be a lawyer and still be honest. Lincoln’s reply is memorable.
“Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you
cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose
some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of which you do, in
advance, consent to be a knave.” There was something of Abraham Lincoln
in Robert Houghwot Jackson. Lincoln said, “I am not bound to win, but
I am bound to be true; I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up
to what light I have.” Jackson worked assiduously to be the best that
he could be with all of the attributes that he had. Most of all, like Lincoln,
he stood with anybody who stood right, stood with him while he was right,
and parted with him when he went wrong.
We see some lawyers today on television gloating in the fact that they have
become millionaires by selling releases to insurance companies and settling
claims, many of which are overpriced. The role of the great lawyer is that
of a peacemaker, not the richest trial man in the country.
One of Jackson’s great essays is entitled “Tribute to a Country
Lawyer.” He was one. He ended his tribute with these words:
“He was too independent to court the populace – he thought of
himself as a leader and lawgiver, not as a mouthpiece. He ‘lived well,
worked hard and died poor.’ Often his name was in a generation or two,
forgotten. It was from this brotherhood that America has drawn its statesmen
and its judges. A free and self-governing Republic stands as a monument for
the little known and unremembered as well as for the famous men of our profession.”
[30 ABAJ 139 (March, 1944)]
We are here on the borderline of Pennsylvania where, at Gettysburg in November
1863, one of the most famous addresses ever given memorialized the dead who
held our country together at the Battle of Gettysburg. Jackson, like Lincoln,
had a religious view of the law. One of your distinguished lawyers here in
Jamestown wrote to me in April of 1986 regarding my biography of Mr. Justice
Jackson, America’s Advocate. He said:
“He venerated the law, and the practice of law. As a part of that respect
for the law, in the right place and at the right time, he didn’t hesitate
to provide direct constructive criticism. He was quiet, thoughtful, prepared,
highly intelligent, articulate, courteous, but direct. He was apparently a
capable administrator, a person who quickly earned loyalty in his associates
and assistants. And, as one of his acquaintances said, he had immense confidence
in himself, and in his own judgment…without being offensive about it.”
As long as men are raised in America, whether country lawyer or city lawyer,
if they observe the standards represented by Robert H. Jackson and fight for
the goals that he held dear with courage which he showed as both a lawyer
and a judge, then this government shall not perish. We can realize that Lincoln’s
dream will be preserved for ourselves and our descendents for generations
to come.
You can be happy and proud that you count among your citizens one of the finest
lawyers ever to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States and one who
took his talents to the world stage at Nuremberg to help make life better
for people throughout the world.
Why did I call his biography “America’s Advocate”? For two
reasons: First, because he represented our country before the first world
trial of war criminals, and second, because he advocated the standards that
America at its best stands for.
We owe it to America as lawyers and judges to help preserve those standards
for the future. He provides us with a splendid standard to which we can all
return again and again for inspiration. You are building here in Jamestown
a permanent shrine to keep that inspiring memory alive. You are erecting a
standard here in Jamestown to which lawyers and others can return again and
again for inspiration now and in the future.
Transcribed by Charlene