Fred M. Vinson Court (1946-1953)
Fred M. Vinson was the 13th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, succeeding Harlan Fiske Stone. Formerly Secretary of the Treasury, Vinson was nominated for Chief Justice by President Harry Truman on June 6, 1946. He was confirmed by the Senate on June 20, 1946, and he was sworn into office on June 24, 1946. Vinson served as Chief Justice until he died on September 8, 1953 and was succeeded by Earl Warren.
The membership of the Vinson Court was stable except for two changes in 1949. That year, Justices Frank Murphy and Wiley Blount Rutledge both died. Truman replaced them with Justices Tom C. Clark and Sherman Minton, respectively. The other six Associate Justices on the Court when Vinson began serving as Chief Justice remained on the Court after his death. This was perhaps unsurprising because none had served on the Court for as long as a decade before Vinson took his seat.
All the Justices on the Vinson Court were appointed by a pair of Democrat Presidents: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Truman. The Vinson Court largely coincided with the Truman Presidency. Vinson was sworn into office about a year after Truman succeeded Roosevelt, and he died eight months after the inauguration of Truman’s successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Vinson stepped into the midst of an internal conflict in the Court. This pitted a group of Justices that favored restraint against a group that urged activism. The advocates of restraint included Justices Frankfurter, Jackson, Reed, and Burton, while the activists included Justices Black, Douglas, Murphy, and Rutledge. Vinson leaned toward restraint, giving that group a slight edge. However, the activists won their share of victories during the first few terms of the Vinson Court. Once Clark and Minton replaced Murphy and Rutledge, restraint prevailed decisively.
Despite losing this battle, Black and Douglas soon saw the pendulum swing back in their direction. The Warren Court would embrace their perspective on the scope of judicial power. Some of the famous opinions of the Warren Court would echo the dissents of activist Justices on the Vinson Court.
Associate Justices on the Vinson Court:
- Hugo Black (1937-1971)
- Stanley Reed (1938-1957)
- Felix Frankfurter (1939-1962)
- William Douglas (1939-1975)
- Frank Murphy (1940-1949)
- Robert H. Jackson (1941-1954)
- Wiley Blount Rutledge (1943-1949)
- Harold Hitz Burton (1945-1958)
- Tom C. Clark (1949-1967)
- Sherman Minton (1949-1956)
Selected Landmark Cases of the Vinson Court:
Author: Tom C. Clark
Topic: Immigration & National Security
Whatever the procedure authorized by Congress is, it is due process as far as a foreign national denied entry is concerned when they are on the threshold of initial entry.
Barrows v. Jackson (1953)
Author: Sherman Minton
Topic: Property Rights & Land Use; Equal Protection
The Fourteenth Amendment bars the enforcement of a covenant forbidding the use and occupancy of real estate by non-Caucasians by an action at law in a state court to recover damages from a co-covenantor for a breach of the covenant.
Kwong Hai Chew v. Colding (1953)
Author: Harold Hitz Burton
Topic: Immigration & National Security
While it may be that a resident foreign national's ultimate right to remain in the U.S. is subject to alteration by statute or authorized regulation because of a voyage undertaken by them to foreign ports, it does not follow that they are thereby deprived of their constitutional right to procedural due process. (In other words, a returning resident foreign national is entitled as a matter of due process to a hearing on the charges underlying any attempt to exclude them.)
Zorach v. Clauson (1952)
Author: William O. Douglas
Topic: Religion
A program did not violate the First Amendment when it permitted public schools to release students during school hours, on written requests of their parents, so that they may leave the school buildings and grounds and go to religious centers for religious instruction or devotional exercises.
Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson (1952)
Author: Tom C. Clark
Topic: Free Speech
Expression by means of motion pictures is included within the free speech and free press guaranty of the First Amendment. A state may not place a prior restraint on the showing of a motion picture on the basis of a censor's conclusion that it is sacrilegious.
Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (Jackson concurrence) (1952)
Author: Robert H. Jackson
Topic: Separation of Powers; Immigration & National Security
When the President acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum, for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate. When the President acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which the President and Congress may have concurrent authority, or in which its distribution is uncertain. When the President takes measures incompatible with the express or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter. More specifically, the military powers of the President as Commander in Chief must not supersede representative government of internal affairs.
Harisiades v. Shaughnessy (1952)
Author: Robert H. Jackson
Topic: Immigration & National Security
Congress could authorize the deportation of a legally resident foreign national because of membership in the Communist Party, even though their membership terminated before the enactment of the law. Immigration policy is so exclusively entrusted to the political branches of the government that it is largely immune from judicial inquiry or interference.
Beauharnais v. Illinois (1952)
Author: Felix Frankfurter
Topic: Free Speech
In the face of a history of tension and violence and its frequent obligato of extreme racial and religious propaganda, a state legislature was not without reason in seeking ways to curb false or malicious defamation of racial and religious groups, made in public places and by means calculated to have a powerful emotional impact on those to whom it was presented.
Rochin v. California (1952)
Author: Felix Frankfurter
Topic: Due Process; Criminal Trials & Prosecutions
Involuntary verbal confessions are inadmissible in a criminal trial under the Due Process Clause even though statements contained in them may be independently established as true. Coerced confessions offend the community's sense of fair play and decency.
Feiner v. New York (1951)
Author: Fred M. Vinson
Topic: Free Speech
When a speaker passes the bounds of argument or persuasion and undertakes incitement to riot, the police are not powerless to prevent a breach of the peace.
Lorain Journal Co. v. U.S. (1951)
Author: Harold Hitz Burton
Topic: Antitrust
A single newspaper, already enjoying a substantial monopoly in its area, violates the “attempt to monopolize” clause of Section 2 of the Sherman Act when it uses its monopoly to destroy threatened competition.
Dennis v. U.S. (1951)
Author: Fred M. Vinson
Topic: Free Speech
Courts must ask whether the gravity of the evil, discounted by its improbability, justifies such invasion of free speech as is necessary to avoid the danger.
U.S. ex rel. Knauff v. Shaughnessy (1950)
Author: Sherman Minton
Topic: Immigration & National Security
Admission of foreign nationals to the U.S. is a privilege granted by the sovereign U.S. government and must be exercised in accordance with the procedure that the U.S. provides. It is not within the province of any court, unless expressly authorized by law, to review the determination of the political branch of the government to exclude a foreign national.
Graver Tank & Mfg. Co. v. Linde Air Products Co. (1950)
Author: Robert H. Jackson
Topic: Patents
In determining equivalents in a patent infringement case, consideration must be given to the purpose for which an ingredient is used in a patent, the qualities that it has when combined with other ingredients, the functions that it is intended to perform, and whether persons reasonably skilled in the art would have known of the interchangeability of an ingredient not contained in the patent with one that was.
Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co. (1950)
Author: Robert H. Jackson
Topic: Lawsuits & Legal Procedures; Due Process
A fundamental requirement of due process in any proceeding that is to be accorded finality is notice reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances, to apprise interested parties of the pendency of the action and afford them an opportunity to present their objections.
Sweatt v. Painter (1950)
Author: Fred M. Vinson
Topic: Equal Protection
An African-American student was required to be admitted to a state law school when he was denied admission solely because of his race, and the legal education offered him at a separate law school established by the state for African-Americans was not substantially equal to the legal education offered at the state law school.
Terminiello v. Chicago (1949)
Author: William O. Douglas
Topic: Free Speech
Freedom of speech, although not absolute, is protected against censorship or punishment unless it is shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest.
Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York (1949)
Author: William O. Douglas
Topic: Equal Protection
It is no requirement of equal protection that all evils of the same genus be eradicated or none at all.
Funk Bros. Seed Co. v. Kalo Inoculant Co. (1948)
Author: William O. Douglas
Topic: Patents
Patents cannot issue for the discovery of the phenomena of nature. If there is to be an invention from such a discovery, it must come from the application of the law of nature to a new and useful end.
U.S. v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1948)
Author: William O. Douglas
Topic: Antitrust
Vertical integration of producing, distributing, and exhibiting motion pictures is not illegal per se. Its legality depends on the purpose or intent with which it was conceived, or the power that it creates and the attendant purpose or intent.
McCollum v. Board of Education (1948)
Author: Hugo Black
Topic: Religion
The utilization of a state's tax supported public school system and its machinery for compulsory public school attendance to enable sectarian groups to give religious instruction to public school pupils in public school buildings violated the First Amendment.
Shelley v. Kraemer (1948)
Author: Fred M. Vinson
Topic: Property Rights & Land Use; Equal Protection
Private agreements to exclude persons of a designated race or color from the use or occupancy of real estate for residential purposes do not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, but it is violative of the Equal Protection Clause for state courts to enforce them.
Everson v. Board of Education (1947)
Author: Hugo Black
Topic: Religion
The First Amendment does not prohibit a state from spending tax-raised funds to pay the bus fares of parochial school pupils as a part of a general program under which it pays the fares of pupils attending public and other schools.
