Brilliant Lawyers Lose Cases Too
By STEVEN M. SWEENEY
CHAUTAUQUA — Supporters of the Robert H. Jackson Center often tout their namesake’s impressive trial technique, winning personal style before courts and his humanity. Sunday they were reminded of another side of the Jamestown native’s humanity — Jackson lost cases too.
Florence Norton was there.
She was a legal secretary for Henry F. Butler, in a prestigious Washington, D.C., law firm when Butler took the case of a young Swedish woman about to be deported.
‘‘My boss took her on as a pro-bono case,’’ said Ms. Norton, a year-round Chautauqua resident who attended the informal international law symposium lectures Sunday evening. ‘‘The woman and her parents returned to Sweden but she was a citizen by birth in the United States. She received a notice that she was no longer a citizen and fought it.’’
According to Ms. Norton, the State Department of the late 1930s attempted to weed from its oversight gardens international and bureaucratic headaches, including thorny questions on dual-citizens, by eliminating the question.
Butler argued for the Swedish woman’s right to citizenship through all the courts, up to and including the Supreme Court of the United States. That’s where she saw Butler in action against thensolicitor general, Robert Jackson.
‘‘One of the things I remember and hope still is true, is the civility of the process,’’ Ms. Norton recalls. ‘‘The picture I remember of him in the Supreme Court was one of great dignity. He argued his case with sort of a gentle kind of logic. But it was completely focused on what the State Department was trying to do.’’
Jackson’s position in the government required that he present the government’s side of the issue and do his best to win.
‘‘On the whole, I think Mr. Jackson was on our side, but he had to argue his case,’’ Ms. Norton said.
The Supreme Court decided in the woman’s and Mr. Butler’s favor. As far as Ms. Norton knows, it was the first time Jackson had lost before the nation’s highest court and one of the few times it ever happened.
She’s not bragging, but just mentioning it for posterity sake.
‘‘I simply had the privilege of working on the brief the attorney used,’’ she said.