Potter Stewart

Potter Stewart (January 23, 1915 – December 7, 1985) was an American lawyer and judge who served as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1958 to 1981.

During his tenure, he made major contributions to criminal justice reform, civil rights, access to the courts, and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.

Stewart earned an academic scholarship to attend the prestigious Hotchkiss School, where he graduated in 1933.

He then went on to Yale University, where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon (Phi chapter) and Skull and Bones graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1937 with a Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude.

He served as chairman of the Yale Daily News.

After graduating from Yale Law School in 1941, Stewart served in World War II as a member of the United States Navy Reserve.

After the war, he practiced law and served on the Cincinnati city council.

After studying international law at the University of Cambridge in England for a year, Stewart enrolled at Yale Law School where he graduated cum laude in 1941 with a Bachelor of Laws.

While at Yale Law School, he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and a member of Phi Delta Phi.

Other members of that era included Gerald R. Ford, Peter H. Dominick, Walter Lord, William Scranton, R. Sargent Shriver, Cyrus R. Vance, and Byron R. White.

The last would later become his colleague on the United States Supreme Court.

Stewart served in World War II as a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve aboard oil tankers.

In 1943, he married Mary Ann Bertles in a ceremony at Bruton Episcopal Church in Williamsburg, Virginia (at which his brother Zeph—also an initiate of Delta Kappa Epsilon and Skull and Bones, and eventually a professor of classics at Harvard—was the best man).

They eventually had a daughter: Harriet (Virkstis), and two sons: Potter Jr. and David.

He was in private practice with Dinsmore & Shohl in Cincinnati.

During the early 1950s, he was elected to the Cincinnati City Council.

In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Stewart to a judgeship on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Stewart was nominated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on April 6, 1954, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit vacated by Judge Xenophon Hicks.

He was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 23, 1954, and received his commission on April 27, 1954.

In 1958, Eisenhower nominated Stewart to succeed retiring Associate Justice Harold Hitz Burton, and Stewart won Senate confirmation afterwards.

He was frequently in the minority during the Warren Court but emerged as a centrist swing vote on the Burger Court.

His service terminated on October 13, 1958, due to his elevation to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Stewart received a recess appointment from President Eisenhower as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court on October 14, 1958, to succeed Harold Hitz Burton.

He took the judicial oath of office that same day.

He served as Circuit Justice for the Sixth Circuit from October 14, 1958 to July 3, 1981, and as Circuit Justice for the Fifth Circuit from October 12, 1971 to January 6, 1972.

Stewart came to a Supreme Court controlled by two warring ideological camps and sat firmly in its center.

A case early in his Supreme Court career showing his role as the swing vote during that time is Irvin v. Dowd.

Stewart was temperamentally inclined to moderate, pragmatic positions, but was often in a dissenting posture during his time on the Warren Court.

He was formally nominated to the same position by President Eisenhower on January 17, 1959.

Public hearings were held before the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 9 and 14, 1959, and the Committee voted on May 5, 1959 to forward his nomination with a favorable report.

He was confirmed by the Senate in a 70–17 vote on May 5, 1959.

All 17 votes against his confirmation came from Southern Democrats (both senators from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, plus Spessard Holland of Florida).

Stewart believed that the majority on the Warren Court had adopted readings of the First Amendment Establishment Clause (Engel v. Vitale (1962), Abington School District v. Schempp (1963)), the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination (Miranda v. Arizona (1966)), and the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of Equal Protection with regard to voting rights (Reynolds v. Sims (1964)) that went beyond the framers' intention.

Stewart retired in 1981 and was succeeded by the first female United States Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O'Connor.

Stewart wrote the majority opinion in notable cases such as Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., Katz v. United States, Chimel v. California, and Sierra Club v. Morton.

He wrote dissenting opinions in cases such as Engel v. Vitale, In re Gault and Griswold v. Connecticut.

He popularized the phrase "I know it when I see it" with a concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio, in which a theater owner had been fined for showing a supposedly obscene film.

Stewart was born in Jackson, Michigan, while his family was on vacation.

He was the son of Harriett L. (Potter) and James Garfield Stewart.

His father, a prominent Republican from Cincinnati, Ohio, served as mayor of Cincinnati for nine years and was later a justice of the Ohio Supreme Court.