Justice at Home

"The outstanding achievement of our system is in changing governmental control and policy by elections instead of by violence. It was planned to direct the impact of conflicting social forces to the ballot box instead of to the battle field." 

-Robert H. Jackson, Founders Day Address at University of North Carolina

Welcome to Justice at Home, a special edition newsletter from the Robert H. Jackson Center that hits your inbox every 3 weeks with updates on our virtual programming, lesson plans and lectures, and interesting finds from our digital archives. 

If you enjoy this newsletter, please forward this email to a friend and share it on your social media pages. Make sure to tag us (@roberthjacksoncenter) and use the hashtag #JusticeatHome.

Tea Time with the Jackson Center: The Court - Confirmation and What's Next

Tea Time with the Jackson Center takes both a look back at Jackson's place in history and a look forward showing how his legacy influences current events.

Tomorrow's Tea Time with the Jackson Center live on Facebook Thursday, October 29 at 3pm, featuring The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus.

Ruth Marcus is the deputy editorial page editor for The Post and has covered every major U.S. government institution, including the Supreme Court, Congress, and the White House. She also writes a weekly column. Marcus has been with The Post since 1984, joined the national staff in 1986, and has been writing about judicial confirmation battles since the Robert Bork hearings in 1987. From 1999 through 2002, she served as deputy national editor, supervising reporters who covered money and politics, Congress, the Supreme Court, and other national issues. Marcus is the author of Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover, the definitive account of a pivotal moment in modern history that will shape the judicial system of America for generations to come.

Ruth and Kristan will talk about Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation process, look at some of the cases the Court is slated or anticipated to hear, and discuss the Court’s impact and possible trajectories.

If you have a Facebook account, follow RHJC's page and Kristan's page. You can interact with us and ask questions of our guests by commenting on the video during the live stream. If you don't have a Facebook account, you can still watch the Teas on the Center's public Facebook page. If you aren't able to catch it live, we post the videos to our YouTube Channel and Facebook page the following day.

Other recent #TeawithRHJC guests have included:

John Q. Barrett, St. John's University School of Law Professor, Elizabeth S. Lenna Fellow and RHJC Board member joined Kristan McMahon for a discussion on the indictments presented to the International Military Tribunal on October 18, 1945. The indictments were filed in Berlin and accused 24 individuals and selected Nazi organizations of conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. 

Debbie Cenziper, an investigative reporter for the Washington Post and our 2020 Al & Marge Brown Lecturer on WWII. She spoke on her most recent book, Citizen 865: The Hunt for Hitler's Hidden Soldiers in America. The book recounts the remarkable true story of a team of Nazi hunters at the U.S. Department of Justice as they raced against time to uncover members of a brutal SS killing force who disappeared in America following WWII.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, and share the videos with your family and friends on social media using the hashtag #TeawithRHJC.

Electoral College Webinar

The Jackson Center welcomed Ned Foley, one of the pre-eminent election law scholars and authors in the U.S for a free webinar on the Electoral College on October 21.

Professor Foley and Kristan discussed the Constitutional and early American history roots of the Electoral College and how it was intended to function. They reviewed some elections where the Electoral College did not work as the Founders envisioned it would and how it might work in the upcoming election. Finally, they discussed how the system could be modified to better incorporate third-party candidates, better provide electors in proportion to the popular vote, and arguments for and against its continuation.  

Jackson biographer John Q. Barrett, Professor of Law at St. John’s University and the Jackson Center’s Elizabeth S. Lenna Fellow and Board member, started the webinar with an overview of Justice Jackson’s dissenting opinion in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1952 Ray v. Blair decision, in which he wrote powerfully against the wisdom of the U.S. Constitution employing the Electoral College, rather than direct voting by the people, to choose our presidents and vice presidents.

Click on the video above to watch the webinar in its entirety on our YouTube channel. Subscribe while you're there, leave a comment to let us know what you learned or enjoyed about the webinar, and continue to ask your questions. 

This Month in Jackson History

October 4, 1890: Irene Alice Gerhardt (pictured above) was born in 1890 in Jockey Hill, NY. She met Robert H. Jackson in 1911 in Albany, where she was a state secretary & he was a law student. They married in 1916.

October 9, 1954: Robert H. Jackson died from a heart attack. Funeral services were held for him at the Washington National Cathedral and St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Jamestown, NY. Jackson's Supreme Court colleagues traveled together to Jamestown for his funeral. He is buried in Maple Grove Cemetery in Frewsburg, NY. 

From Jackson's Desk

Robert H. Jackson was a gifted orator and writer. Many of his articles and speech transcripts are housed on our website. We feature them in our weekly #TuesdayMotivation and #SundayQuote on the Jackson Center's social media pages. 

In a 1940 address establishing the Town Hall at Buffalo, Jackson discussed the continuation of Roosevelt's New Deal policies: 

"The price of free government is that citizens must
keep themselves informed and alert and critical of those in office.
Our people need uncensored facts and undistorted information. But
also they need the diversity of interpretation of events and the clash
of opinion which helps to form individual judgments, the sum of which
constitutes public opinion."

Read the entire address here.

From the Archives

Washington, June 30-TYDINGS OPPOSES JACKSON COURT NOMINATION -   Attorney General Robert Jackson (Left) and Sen. Millard E. Tydings (Right) (D-MD) faced each other across a hearing table on June 30, 1941 as Sen. Tydings told a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee Jackson was unfit for the Supreme Court to which he was nominated by President Roosevelt. Between them is Chairman Carl A. Hatch (D-NM) of the subcommittee, who is reading a letter from Jackson to Tydings.  

Save the Date for #GivingTuesday

In uncertain times, this is a fundamental truth - together we do extraordinary things. Join the Robert H. Jackson's Center Giving Tuesday campaign on December 1st and become a member our Bench Circle. With a gift of just $10 or more per month, you can sustain our mission and work. Keep an eye on your inbox and our social media channels for ways you can partner with us during this 24-hour giving day.