Justice Howell Edmunds Jackson
Today’s Justice of the Day is: HOWELL EDMUNDS JACKSON. Justice Jackson was born on this day, April 8, in 1832.
Justice Jackson was born in Paris, Tennessee, the state from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He graduated from West Tennessee College (now Union University) in Jackson, Tennessee with an A.B. in 1849, before going on to earn an LL.B. from Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama in 1856.
Immediately upon graduation from law school, Justice Jackson launched his career in private practice with a two year-long stint in Jackson; he would subsequently return to that city to work as a private attorney from 1874 to 1880. His time in private practice would include work in Memphis, Tennessee from 1855 to 1861, and 1865 to 1874. In spite of his personal opposition to secession, Justice Jackson served as a receiver of alien property for the West Tennessee region of the Confederate States of America from 1861 to 1864. In 1875 he became a Special Judge of the Court of Arbitration for Western Tennessee, holding that office until 1877. Justice Jackson would go on to serve as a Member of the Tennessee House of Representatives for a single year (starting in 1880), immediately after which he began a half-decade-long term of service as a United States Senator from his home state. He left the United States Senate upon President Grover Cleveland’s successful appointment of him to be a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, where he would remain until his elevation to the SCUS.
Justice Jackson was nominated by President Benjamin Harrison on February 2, 1893, to a seat vacated by Justice Lucius Q. C. Lamar II. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on February 18, and received his commission that day. Justice Jackson took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on March 4, and served out his entire tenure on the Fuller Court. His service was terminated on August 8, 1895, due to his death.
Justice Jackson is not especially well-remembered today, due at least partly to the fact that his tenure is the fifth shortest in SCUS history. Perhaps the most significant case he took part in was Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. (1895), wherein he had actually broken an initial 4-4 tie (he had left Washington, D.C. but not resigned, hoping to overcome a severe case of tuberculosis) in favor of affirming the right of the federal government to impose an income tax, only to see another Member (some speculate it was Justice Horace Gray) leave the newly-formed 5-to-4 majority and strike the new tax down (the decision would later be superseded by the Sixteenth Amendment, which specifically declared that Congress had the authority to impose an income tax, and South Carolina v. Baker (1988), which overruled another section of it). Justice Jackson died very shortly thereafter.