(article is
from the news section of the Jamestown Post-Journal)
4/10/2004 - By JOHN WHITTAKER
Area residents will have a unique opportunity on April 28 to hear firsthand
accounts of the Supreme Court's decision-making process in the famous Brown
v. Board of Education case.
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| Pictured left to right are: John Fassett, E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr. and Frank Sander. |
Four Supreme Court clerks whose justices played significant parts in the unanimous decision will be in Jamestown for a discussion at 10:30 a.m. April 28 at the Robert H. Jackson Center. Anyone attending the discussion is asked to be inside the Carl Cappa Theater by 10 a.m.
Earl Pollock's two-year stint as a Supreme Court clerk was spent with two chief justices. When Fred Vinson died in September 1953, former California Gov. Earl Warren was appointed as the new chief justice. After the Brown case was reargued before the Supreme Court, much of the work writing the opinion fell on Pollock's shoulders.
''The court had decided that as far as the writing of the opinion is concerned, this would be handled exclusively by the chief justice's clerk,'' Pollock said. ''The clerks of the other offices theoretically weren't supposed to participate. There was a very high level of security.''
But, according to Pollock, many of the justices conferred with their clerks during the lengthy deliberation process. While those attending the April 28 discussion at the Jackson Center can hear more about the clerks' contribution to the landmark case, Pollock said the other three men appearing with him in Jamestown played a significant role in the decision.
''A number of the offices did participate with the justices conferring with their clerks,'' Pollock said. ''Certainly, that's true with Robert Jackson and E. Barrett Prettyman. No doubt it's also true with Stanley Reed and Jack Fassett and also (Justice Felix) Frankfurter and Frank Sander.''
Jackson was one of the last to agree with the majority of the court in the Brown case. Jackson drafted a concurring opinion in the case, but after suffering a heart attack the Frewsburg native joined the rest of the court in Warren's opinion.
''He was in the hospital when the new chief justice brought his draft of the Brown decision around,'' said Prettyman, who also clerked for Frankfurter and Justice John Harlan. ''Jackson and I both read it. We both liked it and never went back to his concurring opinion. He left the hospital against his doctor's orders to come to the court on decision day so that the court would not only be unanimous but appear unanimous with all nine justices sitting there. He died not too long after that.''
Each of the four men went on to distinguished careers in the legal community following their time inside the Supreme Court.
E. Barrett Prettyman, Jackson's clerk for two years, joined the Washington law firm of Hogan and Hartson following his clerkship. He then became special assistant to the attorney general and to the White House during the Kennedy administration before returning to his former law firm as a partner.
More recently, Prettyman served as inspector general in the District of Columbia. He was the first president of the District of Columbia Bar and president of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and the D.C. Bar Foundation. He is also vice president of the Supreme Court Historical Society. He has argued 19 cases in the Supreme Court and serves as chairman of the Supreme Court Judicial Fellows Commission.
Pollock followed his time in government service with two years as a trial attorney in the federal Antitrust Division before becoming assistant to the solicitor general from 1956 to 1959. After leaving government service, Pollock became chairman of the Antitrust Law Committee of the American Bar Association in 1979-80 and is a former chairman of the Antitrust Committee of the Chicago Bar Association.
He spent two years as president of the Northwestern University School of Law Alumni Association and in 1976 was given the Northwestern University Alumni Service Award.
Sander moved on to the Tax Division in the U.S. Department of Justice following his clerkship with Frankfurter. He was then a lawyer with the Boston law firm Hill and Barlow and has been a professor at Harvard Law School since 1959.
Sander is recognized as an expert in the area of dispute resolution. He has arbitrated about 250 cases while mediating about 25. He has written several articles and books on the subject and has been nominated for a CPR prize for best book on dispute resolution in 1985, a CPR award for outstanding contributions to ADR in 1990, a Kutak Award in 1993 and the D'Alemenberte-Raven Award in 1999.
After his time as a clerk to Reed, John Fassett joined the law firm of Wiggin and Dana in New Haven, Conn., and served as a partner from 1958 to 1973. He spent 15 years as chairman of the executive committee of New Haven Savings Bank and has been director of the Register Publishing Co., Northeast Datacom Inc. and United Illuminating Co. while also serving as the company's vice president, general counsel, president, chief executive officer and chairman.
Fassett has also published several books and articles, including Mr. Justice Reed and Brown v. Board of Education in the 1986 Yearbook, Supreme Court Historical Society; The Buddha and the Bumblebee: The Saga of Stanley Reed and Felix Frankfurter, 28 Journal of Supreme Court History and several other writings about Reed's life.
''I'm sure we'll talk about Fassett's book coming out through the Supreme
Court Historical Society contending that people have misread what Reed's position
really was and the timing of it and so forth,'' Prettyman said. ''My guess
is that certainly, we'll be talking about that.''