Justice Sherman Minton
Today’s Justice of the Day is: SHERMAN MINTON. Justice Minton was born on this day, October 20, in 1890.
Justice Minton was born in Georgetown, Indiana, in the southeastern part of the state from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He attended the Indiana University School of Law – Bloomington (now called the Maurer School of Law), graduating with an LL.B. in 1915, before earning an LL.M. from Yale Law School in 1916.
Justice Minton entered private practice in New Albany, Indiana (a city close to his place of birth) immediately upon graduation, and would work there as a private attorney periodically over the next three decades (first from 1916 to 1917, then from 1919 to 1925 and from 1928 to 1933). In 1917, he began a two-year term of service as a Captain of the United States Army’s Motor Transport Corps. Justice Minton briefly worked in private practice in Miami, Florida from 1925 to 1928, and later on became Counselor to the Indiana Public Service Commission (from 1933 to 1934). In 1935, he took office as a United States Senator from his home state of Indiana, serving as a Democrat until 1941, the year after his bid for reelection was defeated. Justice Minton served in the Executive Office of the President as an Administrative Assistant and Liaison to military agencies the year he left the U.S. Senate, and then became a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (also in 1941), where he would remain until his elevation to the SCUS.
Justice Minton was nominated by President Harry S. Truman on September 15, 1949, to a seat vacated by Justice Wiley Blount Rutledge. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 4, and received his commission the following day. Justice Minton took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on October 12, and served on the Vinson and Warren Courts. He assumed senior status on October 15, 1956, and his service was terminated on April 9, 1965, due to his death.
Justice Minton was not a particularly high-profile Member of either the U.S. Senate or the SCUS, and he remains somewhat obscure today. He is said to have disappointed some of President Truman’s liberal supporters, though he did join the unanimous Opinion of the Court in the most famous case of his era, Brown v. Board of Education (I) (1954).