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Supreme Court · Chief Justice

Harlan Stone

Republican appointee: Appointed by Calvin Coolidge (R)

Served 1925–1946 · 9 terms in the data

Confirmed 71–6

Elevated to Chief Justice by Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1941

Biography

Harlan Fiske Stone was an American attorney who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1925 to 1941 and then as the 12th chief justice of the United States from 1941 until his death in 1946. He also served as the U.S. Attorney General from 1924 to 1925 under President Calvin Coolidge, with whom he had attended Amherst College as a young man.

Source: Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Ideology over time

Stone and the 16 justices who overlapped with Stone, 1937–1945

−4−20+2+419401945More conservativeMore liberalStoneFrankfurterR. JacksonBurtonReedRutledgeMurphyDouglasBlack
  • Harlan Stone
  • 95% credible interval
  • Peer, appointed by a Democrat
  • Peer, appointed by a Republican
  • Court median
How to read this

Martin–Quinn scores place each justice on a single liberal–conservative dimension, estimated from their votes across terms, with scores allowed to shift from one term to the next. Higher is more conservative. The shaded band is the credible interval: wider when the record is thin, especially in a justice’s first terms, and narrower as votes accumulate.

Where Stone sits among all justices

Career average, every justice in the data set

−4−20+2+4−0.770.73

Stone’s range across terms

Served alongside Stone

16 justices

Closest career average first. Filled dot: the peer. Ring: Stone.

JusticeTogetherCareer avg
Charles Hughes1937–1940career average 0.19 versus Stone at 0.01James Byrnes1941career average −0.18 versus Stone at 0.01Stanley Reed1937–1945career average 0.37 versus Stone at 0.01Felix Frankfurter1938–1945career average 0.52 versus Stone at 0.01Louis Brandeis1937–1938career average −0.61 versus Stone at 0.01Robert Jackson1941–1945career average 0.70 versus Stone at 0.01Harold Burton1945career average 1.00 versus Stone at 0.01Wiley Rutledge1942–1945career average −1.42 versus Stone at 0.01Owen Roberts1937–1944career average 1.52 versus Stone at 0.01George Sutherland1937career average 1.60 versus Stone at 0.01Benjamin Cardozo1937career average −1.59 versus Stone at 0.01Frank Murphy1939–1945career average −1.59 versus Stone at 0.01Hugo Black1937–1945career average −1.76 versus Stone at 0.01Pierce Butler1937–1938career average 2.23 versus Stone at 0.01James McReynolds1937–1940career average 3.50 versus Stone at 0.01William Douglas1938–1945career average −4.70 versus Stone at 0.01

Scores: Martin, Andrew D. and Kevin M. Quinn. 2002. “Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953–1999.” Political Analysis 10:134–153, from mqscores.wustl.edu. Appointment data: Federal Judicial Center biographical directory. Biographies: Wikipedia, text abridged, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Portraits: public-domain images via Wikimedia Commons.