John Marshall Harlan

Details

Birth

June 1, 1833 · Boyle County, Kentucky

Death

October 14, 1911

Law school

transylvania

Prior experience

Various legal and public service prior to appointment

Biography

John Marshall Harlan (June 1, 1833 – October 14, 1911) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1877 to 1911. Born in Boyle County, Kentucky, to a prominent political family, Harlan graduated from Centre College in 1850 and studied law at Transylvania University. He served as a Union colonel during the American Civil War and was Kentucky's attorney general from 1863 to 1867. Initially a member of the Whig Party and later the Know Nothing Party, Harlan eventually joined the Republican Party in 1868, supporting the abolition of slavery and civil rights for freed slaves. President Rutherford B. Hayes nominated Harlan to the Supreme Court in 1877, where he served for 34 years until his death. Harlan developed a judicial philosophy emphasizing a broad interpretation of the Constitution's civil rights amendments and federal power. He became known as "The Great Dissenter" for his lone dissents in several landmark civil rights cases. His most famous dissent came in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), where he opposed the majority's endorsement of "separate but equal" racial segregation, writing that "the Constitution is color-blind." He also dissented in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), arguing that Congress had broad authority to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment against private discrimination. Harlan's legacy centers on his prescient civil rights jurisprudence, which would later influence the Supreme Court's decisions in the mid-20th century. His Plessy dissent became foundational to the Court's reasoning in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Beyond civil rights, he authored important majority opinions expanding federal regulatory power and wrote extensively on constitutional interpretation. His grandson, John Marshall Harlan II, also served as a Supreme Court Justice from 1955 to 1971.

Notable opinions

• Plessy v. Ferguson
• Civil Rights Cases