num_pages: 914
description: This authoritative and copiously documented study is the first full-dress biography of the twelfth Chief Justice of the United States, a New Hampshire Republican who helped to liberalize the Court, and who was promoted to the post by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Moreover, it is a history of the Supreme Court and its transformation during the twenty-one years of unprecedented change (1925-1946) during which Stone was on the bench. Harlan Fiske Stone was dedicated to the law, but he had other lively interests. He loved good wine, travel, music, and art. He had a typically American family life. His years of training for the highest post took him through Amherst, Columbia Law (as a student, teacher, and finally Dean), private practice, and the Attorney-Generalship under Coolidge. We are apt to forget how frequently, in spite of the precept of "self-restraint" which he preached and which characterized his own life and thought, he was lined up with the great liberal dissenters, Holmes, Brandeis, and later Cardozo. The famous cases in which Stone played a significant part, either for or against the decision of the court, are fully analyzed here. Probably no other modern biography has given so vivid a picture of the Court's workings and the evolution of law in our time.
language: English
title: Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law
titlecomplete: Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law
characters: Harlan F. Stone
ratings_count: 4
publisher: Viking Books