Justice Robert H. Jackson

“It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.” 

Robert Houghwout Jackson was born in Spring Creek, Pennsylvania on February 13, 1892. Five years later his family moved to Frewsburg, New York, a nearby village to Jamestown, New York. He graduated from Frewsburg High School in 1909 and spent a post-graduate year at Jamestown High School. He did not attend college, but apprenticed in a law office and attended Albany Law School for one year. He took the New York State Bar exam at age 21, and became a prominent trial lawyer in Jamestown.

He went on to become Solicitor General, Attorney General and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He represented the United States at the London Conference that set up the International Military Tribunal, and served as Chief of Counsel for the United States at the first Nuremberg Trial in 1945 and 1946.