Burton, Harold Hitz (b. Jamaica Plain, Mass., 22 June 1888; d. Washington, D.C., 28 Oct. 1964; interred Highland Park Cemetery, Cleveland, Oh.), associate justice, 1945–1958.
During the October 1954 term, the Court's law
clerks voted on the one justice they would choose to preside if they themselves were on trial. Out of a Court that included Earl
Warren, Hugo
Black, Felix
Frankfurter, and William O.
Douglas, they overwhelmingly selected Harold Burton. His service on the Court was dedicated to producing painstakingly crafted opinions, most resting on narrow grounds, designed to appeal to as many of his colleagues as possible.
Burton was raised in Boston where his father was dean of the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He graduated summa cum laude from Bowdoin College in 1909, where he had been active in athletics. He received the LL.B. from the Harvard Law School in 1912, married Selma Florence Smith, and moved to Cleveland, where he practiced law. Serving in the army in World War I, he rose to the rank of captain and received the Purple Heart.
Burton was elected to the Ohio legislature in 1929 after a failed attempt to win appointment to a vacancy on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. He also served as the chief legal official of Cleveland from 1929 to 1932. He was elected mayor of Cleveland in 1935 and was reelected twice. As mayor, his principal achievement was coping with high unemployment and inadequate welfare funds. In 1940 Burton easily won both the Republican nomination and the general election to the United States Senate. In his service in the Senate Burton exhibited a mildly conservative, predominantly moderate stance.
After the October 1944 term of the Court ended, Justice Owen J.
Roberts announced his retirement, giving President Harry Truman, a Democrat, his first opportunity to make a high court appointment. The president was under considerable pressure to name a Republican to the vacancy. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt had only appointed Democrats to the Court (with the exception of Stone's elevation to chief justice); no Republican had been named for over a decade. Truman selected Burton not only because he thought well of him but also because the governor of Ohio, a Democrat, was likely to appoint a member of his own party to Burton's Senate seat. Burton was confirmed within a day of his nomination; the
“Senate Judiciary Committee heard no testimony and the full Senate approved the appointment unanimously.
During his thirteen terms Justice Burton staked out a moderate position on a highly fractured Court. In segregation cases he was a leading member favoring the extension of constitutional protection for African‐Americans, while in other cases he tended to favor more often Justice Frankfurter's doctrines of restraint. For example, in civil liberties and national security cases he usually voted to uphold government authority against claims of individual rights (see
First Amendment;
Speech and the Press). In business cases he mostly voted in an economically conservative fashion, often against labor union power and in favor of narrow construction of
antitrust laws.
Shortly after the October 1958 term began, Parkinson's disease compelled Justice Burton's resignation. His health slowly deteriorated and he died six years later.
Bibliography
Mary Frances Berry , Stability, Security, and Continuity: Mr. Justice Burton and Decision‐Making in the Supreme Court, 1945–1958 (1978).
Eric A. Chiappinelli
