Justice Potter Stewart
Today’s Justice of the Day is: POTTER STEWART. Justice Stewart took the Judicial Oath to officially join the Supreme Court of the United States on this day, October 14, in 1958.
Justice Stewart was born on January 23, 1915, in Jackson, Michigan, though he was raised and spent much of his professional life in Ohio, the state from which he would be appointed to the SCUS. His early years were steeped in politics, thanks to his having been the son of Cincinnati, Ohio’s Republican mayor. Justice Stewart attended Yale University, earning a B.A. in 1937. He also earned a Henry Fellowship from the University of Cambridge in England, lasting from 1937 to 1938. Justice Stewart later attended Yale Law School, which he graduated from with an LL.B. in 1941.
Immediately upon graduation, Justice Stewart began a year-long stint in private practice in New York City. In 1942, he became a Lieutenant (Junior Grade) in the U.S. Naval Reserve, a position he left in 1945, when he returned to work as a private attorney in New York City. Justice Stewart then continued in private practice after going back to his home town of Cincinnati in 1947. His career as a private attorney ended when he was appointed to be a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954, where he remained until his elevation to the SCUS.
Justice Stewart received a recess appointment from President Eisenhower on October 14, 1958, to a seat vacated by Justice Harold Hitz Burton, and was subsequently nominated to that same position on January 17, 1959. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 5, and received his commission two days later. Justice Stewart served on the Warren and Burger Courts, and assumed senior status on July 3, 1981. His service was terminated on December 7, 1985, due to his death.
Justice Stewart joined the SCUS in an era when it was deeply divided between its conservative and liberal factions, lead principally by Justices Felix Frankfurter and Hugo Black (though Chief Justice Earl Warren was also a key player for the liberals, and Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. would come to play an increasingly-large role in leading that faction throughout the 1960’s), respectively. He refused to join either side, and as a result emerged as the premier swing vote in many of the SCUS’s most bitterly-contested cases. Justice Stewart’s role as tie-breaker was severely diminished by the addition of Justices Arthur Goldberg (as well as his successor, Justice Abe Fortas) and Thurgood Marshall, who enabled the SCUS’s liberals to exert much greater control over the Court’s agenda and precedent-setting powers without needing to win him over. The retirement of Chief Justice Warren, along with the forced resignation of Justice Fortas (and, more importantly, their succession by moderately-conservative Justices), brought Justice Stewart back into prominence as a pivotal vote on the Court, a status he would retain until he left the bench.