Harlan Stone – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

This photograph, signed by Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Taft and the eight associate justices, circa 1927, sold for $14,340 at a September 2011 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

It is that time again when the news will be filled with predictions of pestilence, war, famine and death (the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) as President Trump tees up his next candidate for the Supreme Court. One side will talk about the reversal of Roe v. Wade as an example of the terrible future that lies ahead. The other side will be quick to point out that this fear-mongering first started in 1981 when Sandra Day O’Connor (the first woman to serve on the court) was nominated by President Reagan and that nothing has happened in the intervening 37 years.

My prediction is that regardless of whoever is confirmed, there will be no evidence from the past on any opinions on “Roe” and he or she will have been groomed by the “Murder Boards” to answer that it is settled law. Murder Boards are groups of legal experts who will rehearse the nominee on how to answer every possible question the Senate Judiciary Committee might ask on any subject, not just Roe, in their role in giving advice and consent. It produces what former Vice President Joe Biden described as a “Kabuki dance” when he was in the Senate.

The questioning does produce great public theater, but it is a tradition that dates to 1925 when nominee Harlan Stone actually requested he be allowed to answer questions about rumors of improper ties to Wall Street. It worked and he was confirmed by a vote of 71-6 and would later serve as Chief Justice (1941-46). In 1955, John Marshall Harlan II was next when Southern Senators wanted to know his views on public school desegregation vis-à-vis Brown v. Board of Education. He was also successfully confirmed 71-11 and since then, every nominee to the court has been questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The apparent record is the 30 hours of grilling Judge Robert Bork experienced in 1987, when he got “Borked” by trying to answer every single question honestly. Few make that mistake today.

Roe v. Wade was a 1973 case in which the issue was whether a state court could constitutionally make it a crime to perform an abortion, except to save the mother’s life. Abortion had a long, legal history dating to the 1820s when anti-abortion statues began to appear that resembled an 1803 law in Britain that made it illegal after “quickening” (start of fetal movements) using various rationales such as illegal sexual conduct, unsafe procedures and the state’s responsibilities in protecting prenatal life.

The criminalization accelerated from the 1860s and by 1900, abortion was a felony in every state. Despite this, the practice continued to grow and in 1921, Margaret Sanger founded the American Birth Control League. By the 1930s, licensed physicians performed an estimated 800,000 procedures each year. In 1967, Colorado became the first state to decriminalize abortion in cases of rape, incest or permanent disability of the woman. By 1972, 13 states had similar laws and in 1970, Hawaii was the first state to legalize abortion on the request of the woman. So the legal situation prior to Roe was that abortion was illegal in 30 states and legal in the other 20 under certain conditions.

“Jane Roe” was an unmarried pregnant woman who supposedly wished to terminate her pregnancy and instituted an action in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. A three-judge panel found Texas criminal statues unconstitutionally vague and the right to choose to have children was protected by the 9th through the 14th Amendments. All parties appealed and on Jan. 22, 1973, the Supreme Court ruled the Texas statute was unconstitutional. The court declined to define when human life begins.

Jane Roe’s real name was Norma McCorvey and she became a pro-life advocate before she died and maintained she never had the abortion and that she was the victim of two young, ambitious lawyers looking for a plaintiff. Henry Wade was district attorney of Dallas from 1951 to 1987 and the longest serving DA in United States history. He was also involved in the prosecution of Jack Ruby for killing Lee Harvey Oswald. After he was convicted, Ruby appealed and the verdict was overturned, but he died of lung cancer and is constitutionally presumed innocent.

Stay tuned for the fireworks.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

A Harry Truman signed and inscribed photograph, dated Jan. 17, 1953, sold for nearly $3,885 at a February 2006 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

The news broke shortly before 6 p.m. on April 12, 1945. President Franklin Roosevelt had died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Ga. Within minutes, the bulletin had reached every part of the country. It was almost midnight in London, but in Berlin, it was already the next day, where it was (ominously) Friday the 13th. However, Joseph Goebbels interpreted it as a lucky turning point when he telephoned Adolf Hitler. He was already devising ways to turn this to Germany’s advantage, even as enemy troops closed in on the Third Reich.

By 7 p.m., Harry Truman, his Cabinet and Bess and Margaret were assembled in the Cabinet Room along with Chief Justice Harlan Stone to administer the oath of office. Within hours of Roosevelt’s death, the country had a new president.

Then the family and the Cabinet were dismissed. Secretary of War Henry Stimson lingered to brief the new president on a matter of extreme urgency. He explained that a new weapon of almost inconceivable power had been developed, but offered no details. Truman had just learned about the existence of the atomic bomb. He canceled a date to play poker and went to bed. It had been a long day.

It was also a long day for America’s top generals: Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton and Omar Bradley. The shock of losing their trusted commander-in-chief was compounded by genuine concern over Truman’s lack of experience. To make matters worse, they had just seen their first Nazi death camp. All were depressed, but Patton was especially emphatic about his concerns for the future.

The next morning, President Truman arrived at the White House promptly at 9 a.m. It was now April 13, 1945 – 27 years to the day since he had landed at Brest, France (Brittany), as a lowly 1st Lieutenant in the Allied Expeditionary Forces in WWI. Now he was the United States’ commander in chief in the century’s second world war. Everything in the Oval Office was eerily just as FDR had left it. He sat in the chair behind the desk and quietly pondered the challenges he had inherited. Downstairs, the White House staff was frantically coping with the press, the jangle of telephones, and wondering what to do next.

After a routine update on the status of the war, Truman surprised everyone by announcing he was going to the Capitol to “have lunch with some of the boys” … 17 congressmen to be exact. After a few drinks and lunch, he told the group he felt overwhelmed and emphasized he would need their help. Then he stepped out to meet the assembled press and made his now famous remarks: “Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don’t know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me.”

Less than four months later, in August 1945, the man from Independence, Mo., now confident and in control, dropped his own bombshell when he broadcast to the nation:

“Sixteen hours ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima,” the president said, adding, “We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive and enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy Japan’s power to make war. … If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”

The buck DID stop here, just as the little sign on his desk promised.

Tag: Harlan Stone

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