Stone Court

Supreme Court of the United States
Stone Court
Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone
July 3, 1941 – April 22, 1946
(4 years, 293 days)
SeatSupreme Court Building
Washington, D.C.
No. of positions9
Stone Court decisions

The Stone Court refers to the Supreme Court of the United States from 1941 to 1946, when Harlan F. Stone served as Chief Justice of the United States. Stone succeeded the retiring Charles Evans Hughes in 1941, and served as Chief Justice until his death, at which point Fred Vinson was nominated and confirmed as Stone's replacement. He was the fourth chief justice to have previously served as an associate justice and the second to have done so without a break in tenure (after Edward Douglass White). Presiding over the country during World War II, the Stone Court delivered several important war-time rulings, such as in Ex parte Quirin, where it upheld the President's power to try Nazi saboteurs captured on American soil by military tribunals.[1][2] It also supported the federal government's policy of relocating Japanese Americans into internment camps.[3]

It was also one of the three successive courts that oversaw the gradual dismantling of Jim Crow laws and the separate but equal doctrine, notably in the cases Mitchell v. United States (1941) and Smith v. Allwright (1944).[4]

  1. ^ Ex Parte Quirin, 317 U. S. 1 (1942)
  2. ^ Renstrom, Peter (2001). The Stone Court: Justices, Rulings, and Legacy. ABC-CLIO. pp. 179–180. ISBN 9781576071533. Retrieved 2 March 2016.
  3. ^ "Harlan Fiske Stone: Supreme Court Justice (1872–1946)". A&E Television Networks. April 2, 2014. Retrieved January 20, 2018.
  4. ^ Olson, James S.; Beal, Heather Olson (2011). The Ethnic Dimension in American History. John Wiley & Sons. p. 250. ISBN 978-1-4443-5839-1.