by Jeremiah Griffey
A St. John's University professor will give a speech at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday
to Chautauqua Institution's Women's Club about the heroism of Nuremberg prosecutor
Robert H. Jackson.
John Q. Barrett's speech – part of this week's "The Phenomenon
of Heroism" theme – will encompass six incidents in Jackson's life
in which he displayed qualities of heroic behavior.
Jackson, a former U. S. Supreme Court justice and attorney general, grew up
in Frewsburg and Jamestown, serving 21 years as a trial lawyer in the city
before President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed him general counsel of
the Bureau of Internal Revenue in 1934.
Though he initially expected his stop in Washington to be temporary, his career
ended there with his death on Oct. 9 1954, after serving 13 years on the Supreme
Court.
"This program is an opportunity to introduce the new Jackson Center and
Justice Jackson as a local hero on the grandest scale," Barrett said.
"I got interested in him the way every law student and lawyer get exposed
to him -- through his words in the opinions he wrote as a Supreme Court justice,
which are ringing, brilliant rhetorical gems. His words are just more interesting
than most justices who ever served."
Barrett will cover Jackson's career from his first case defending labor radicals
in Jamestown – before he was admitted to the bar association –
to prosecuting a civil tax case against Andrew Mellon, to dissenting against
his Supreme Court colleagues in a decision in a Japanese internment trial.
Jackson also was a part of the unanimous decision in Brown vs. Board of Education
banning segregation in schools.
"He struggled visibly with whether he thought the court was the proper
institution to force society forward on issues of racial justice, or whether
the political branches – Congress and the President – were more
appropriate places, and if the court was going to take the step, as they did
in Brown, whether the court could claim to be doing it under the 14th amendment,"
Barrett said.
In the end, Jackson proved to be on the side of racial equality. When he became
attorney general, he stopped segregation of the Washington, D.C. bar association.
"He grew up in all-white environments, generally," Barrett said.
"Over his life, a guy of liberal sensibilities and non-discrimination
met new contexts that required him to think out and do things that made choices
that were defining. (Desegregating the bar association) was a fight he didn't
have to pick. It wasn't his job. He just had an impulse that it was the right
thing to do."
Barrett is currently working on two books involving Jackson. The first, an
incomplete memoir written by Jackson about his relationship with Roosevelt,
should be finished within the next year, Barrett said.
He has worked closely with Jackson's family to complete the project.
He and Roosevelt became good friends over the years fishing and playing cards
together. They had a strong political relationship, too—at one point
Roosevelt asked Jackson, a Democrat, to run for New York State Governor, which
would have set Jackson up to be Roosevelt's successor as President.
However, the Democratic incumbent decided to run, ending Jackson's career
as an elected official before it started.
Barrett's second book will deal with Jackson during the Nuremberg war crimes
trial—a highly documented historical event—but Barrett has found
a new spin to put on it.
"There's a large Nuremberg literature, but it tends to be the courtroom
story," Barrettt said. "I think there is not a good internal understanding
of him. There is not really a good study of what it is to be Robert Johnson
at Nuremberg."
Greg Peterson, an area attorney and president of the Robert H. Jackson Center,
will introduce Barrett and talk about both Jackson's biographical information
and the late Daniel Bratton, former Chautauqua president and executive director
of the Center.
"As a lawyer in the area, you can't help but know the name Robert Jackson,
but at the same time what you really know is – you believe he was from
the Frewsburg, you believe he practiced in Jamestown, you know he was involved
in Nuremberg and he was on the Supreme Court, and that's kind of it,"
Peterson said.
Peterson said through the Center and talks like the one Barrett and he are
doing, the legacy of Jackson will live on and perhaps grow.
"Jackson has been dead for almost 50 years and a lot of people, once
their time has past, are past," Barrett said, agreeing with Peterson.
"Robert Jackson, in a very interesting way, becomes more important as
his time recedes further into the past."