Harlan F. Stone

Harlan Fiske Stone (October 11, 1872 – April 22, 1946) was an American lawyer and jurist. A native of New Hampshire, he served as the dean of Columbia Law School, his alma mater, in the early 20th century. As a member of the Republican Party, he was appointed as the 52nd Attorney General of the United States before becoming an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1925. In 1941, Stone became the 12th Chief Justice of the court, serving until his death in 1946.

Quotes

 * Thus viewed, law as it exists in the modern community may be conveniently, although perhaps not comprehensively, defined as the sum total of all those rules of conduct for which there is state sanction.
 * Law and its Administration (1915), p. 3.


 * Just what instrumentalities of either a state or the federal government are exempt from taxation by the other cannot be stated in terms of universal application.
 * Metcalf & Eddy v. Mitchell, 269 U.S. 514., 522 (1926).


 * To say that only those businesses affected with a public interest may be regulated is but another way of stating that all those businesses which may be regulated are affected with a public interest.
 * Tyson and Brother v. Banton, 273 U.S. 418, 451 (1927).


 * There is grim irony in speaking of the freedom of contract of those who, because of their economic necessities, give their service for less than is needful to keep body and soul together.
 * Morehead v. N.Y. ex rel. Tipaldo, 298 U.S. 587, 632 (1936).


 * History teaches us that there have been but few infringements of personal liberty by the state which have not been justified, as they are here, in the name of righteousness and the public good, and few which have not been directed, as they are now, at politically helpless minorities.
 * Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586 (1940).


 * The guarantees of civil liberty are but guarantees of freedom of the human mind and spirit and of reasonable freedom and opportunity to express them...The very essence of the liberty which they guarantee is the freedom of the individual from compulsion as to what he shall think and what he shall say...
 * Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 604 (1940).


 * The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered.
 * United States v. Darby Lumber Company, 312 U.S. 100, 124 (1941).


 * Words, especially those of a constitution, are not to be read with such stultifying narrowness.
 * United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 316 (1941).


 * The right to participate in the choice of representatives for Congress includes, as we have said, the right to cast a ballot and to have it counted at the general election whether for the successful candidate or not.
 * United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 318 (1941).


 * Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.
 * Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, 100 (1943).


 * Democracy cannot survive without the guidance of a creative minority.
 * Reported in Alpheus Thomas Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone, Pillar of the Law (1956), p. 95.

Attributed

 * The law itself is on trial in every case as well as the cause before it.
 * Reported variously, including in Harris v. State, 632 So. 2d 503, 543 (Ala. Crim. App. 1992), Judge Mark Montiel, dissenting. Original source not found.


 * Wealth, power, the struggle for ephemeral social and political prestige, which so absorb our attention and energy, are but the passing phase of every age; ninety-day wonders which pass from man’s recollection almost before the actors who have striven from them have passed from the stage. ... What is significant in the record of man’s development is none of these. It is rather those forces in society and the lives of those individuals, who have, in each generation, added something to man’s intellectual and moral attainment, that lay hold on the imagination and compel admiration and reverence in each succeeding generation.
 * Reported in Alpheus Thomas Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone, Pillar of the Law (1956), p. 209


 * The horse and mule live thirty years And nothing know of wines and beers; The goat and sheep at twenty die, With never a taste of scotch or rye; The cow drinks water by the ton, And at eighteen is mostly done. Without the aid of rum or gin The dog at fifteen cashes in; The cat in milk and water soaks, And then at twelve years old it croaks; The modest, sober, bone-dry hen Lays eggs for nogs and dies at ten; All animals are strictly dry; They sinless live and swiftly die, While sinful, gleeful, rum-soaked men Survive for three score years and ten. And some of us - a mighty few - Stay pickled 'till we're ninety-two.
 * Reported in Alpheus Thomas Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone, Pillar of the Law (1956), p. 731; Mason reports this as a toast Stone was fond of reciting, but does not settle authorship with Stone. Various other sources following Mason attribute authorship to Stone, but without citing an original source.

Quotes about Harlan F. Stone

 * Stone ... castigated the educated elites, especially lawyers and judges, who used their skills to become “the obsequious servant of business” and in the process were “tainted with the morals and manners of the marketplace in its most anti-social manifestations.” And he warned law schools that their exclusive focus on “proficiency” overlooked “the grave danger to the public if this proficiency be directed wholly to private ends without thought of the social consequences.” He lambasted “the cramped mind of the clever lawyer, for whom intellectual dignity and freedom had been forbidden by the interests which he served.” He called the legal profession’s service to corporation power a “sad spectacle” and attorneys who sold their souls to corporations “lawyer criminals.”
 * Chris Hedges, "The Corruption of the Law," August 20, 2017