American lawyer and politician who serves as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court
1833 CE
to 1911 CE
John Marshall Harlan (June 1, 1833 – October 14, 1911) is an American lawyer and politician who serves as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
He is often called "The Great Dissenter" due to his many dissents in cases that restrict civil liberties, including the Civil Rights Cases and Plessy v. Ferguson.
His grandson John Marshall Harlan II is also a Supreme Court justice.
Born into a prominent, slave-holding family in Frankfort, Kentucky, Harlan experiences a quick rise to political prominence.
When the American Civil War breaks out, Harlan strongly supports the Union and recruits the 10th Kentucky Infantry.
Despite his opposition to the Emancipation Proclamation, he serves in the war until 1863, when he wins election as Attorney General of Kentucky.
Harlan loses his re-election bid in 1867 and joins the Republican Party in the following year, quickly emerging as the leader of the Kentucky Republican Party.
After the 1876 presidential election, newly-inaugurated President Rutherford B. Hayes appoints Harlan to the Supreme Court.
Harlan's jurisprudence is marked by his life-long belief in a strong national government, his sympathy for the economically disadvantaged, and his view that the Reconstruction Amendments had fundamentally transformed the relationship between the federal government and the state governments.
He dissents in both the Civil Rights Cases (1883) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which permit state and private actors to engage in segregation.
He also writes dissents in major cases such as Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895), which strikes down a federal income tax, United States v. E. C. Knight Co. (1895), which severely limits the power of the federal government to pursue antitrust actions, and Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States (1911), which establishes the rule of reason.
He is the first Supreme Court justice to advocate the Incorporation of the Bill of Rights, and his majority opinion in Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Co. v. City of Chicago (1897) incorporated the Takings Clause.
Harlan will be largely forgotten in the decades after his death, but many scholars today consider him to be one of the greatest Supreme Court justices of his era.
