Harlan F. Stone

Harlan Fiske Stone. [Born] 1872. Chief Justice of the United States.

A member of the Century for thirty-four years, honorary chairman of our wine committee, he loved the companionship of friends in our Association.

The facts of his early life are typical of his time and place: birth on a New Hampshire hillside farm, hard work and slender means as a youth, determined search for self-improvement, education acquired by the old-fashioned, homely procedures of hard work and saving.

He came to New York, a graduate of Amherst, after he had earned himself a grubstake for studying law by teaching school in Newburyport. He took his law degree at Columbia University in 1898 and entered upon the practice of the law. But he also taught in the law school and in 1910 was made its dean. It was then that his greatness began to emerge to public view.

One element of that greatness was his intense capacity for oneness of purpose and devotion to the duties he had undertaken. As Dean of the Columbia Law School his single purpose was to make it the best law school in the country.

Likewise when he became Attorney General of the United States the same intensity of application to high purpose cleaned the Augean stables of his predecessor and restored the office to public confidence.

During his twenty-one years on the Supreme Court of the United States this same oneness constantly was plain. He resisted all attempts to divert his energies to other activities. To all he said substantially the same thing, as he wrote in September, 1944:

“I am doing all I can, by way of precept and example, to counteract the unfortunate tendency of Federal judges . . . to dilute their judicial influence and efficiency by engaging in extra-judicial activities.

“Chance and fate have placed me at the head of a great institution which at the moment is in real danger of losing the proper influence and prestige. I think that everything I have should be devoted to avoiding such an unhappy possibility and so I am compelled to forego the opportunity to do many interesting things which I would like to do; if obligations I have already assumed would permit.”

There was one exception which is revealing: his chairmanship of the Board of the National Gallery of Art. It is revealing; for this man of New Hampshire granite loved beauty.

This is not the time and place for an appraisal of our friend’s judicial career; nor could I make it if it were.

But one judicial utterance, at least, deserves to be quoted here, as showing the man he was:

It came in the course of his dissent from the view of the majority of the Court invalidating the Agricultural Adjustment Act: “. . . while unconstitutional exercise of power by the executive and legislative branches of the Government is subject to judicial restraint, the only check upon our own exercise of power is our own sense of self-restraint.”

Penetrating analysis, balanced judgment, and unusual power of expression he had. He also was a person of unaffected simplicity, sensitivity to beauty, helpfulness to others, and he was a lovable man.

Source: Henry Allen Moe Papers, Mss.B.M722. Reproduced by permission of American Philosophical Society Library & Museum, Philadelphia

Henry Allen Moe
Henry Allen Moe Papers, 1946 Memorials

Harlan Fiske Stone was born in New Hampshire and attended Amherst High School. He grew up on a farm, and his dislike of farm work led him to attend college. After being expelled from Massachusetts Agricultural College, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College in 1894. He attended Columbia Law School and was admitted to the New York bar in 1898. In 1899, Stone married Agnes Harvey and they had two sons: one son became an acclaimed mathematician, while the other was a well-known lawyer.

Stone practiced law while lecturing at Columbia Law School and eventually became the school’s dean from 1910 to 1923. In 1924, he was appointed U.S. Attorney General by his Amherst classmate and then-President Calvin Coolidge. As Attorney General, Stone was responsible for the appointment of J. Edgar Hoover as head of the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Investigation, which would become the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

On January 5, 1925, Stone was appointed an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, becoming Coolidge’s only appointment to the Court. During the 1932–1937 Supreme Court terms, Stone, along with Justices Louis Brandeis and Benjamin Cardozo, was considered a member of the Three Musketeers, which was considered to be the liberal faction of the Supreme Court. The three were highly supportive of the New Deal programs of Franklin Roosevelt, which many of the other Justices opposed.

Stone’s support of the New Deal brought him into FDR’s favor, and in June 1941, the President elevated him to Chief Justice, a seat vacated by Charles Evans Hughes. He remained in this position until his death in 1946 when he died of a cerebral hemorrhage that struck him on the bench [reportedly] as he read his dissent in Girouard v. United States. He was the shortest-serving Chief Justice for more than two centuries.

James Charlton
“Centurions on Stamps,” Part I (Exhibition, 2010)