Dennis J. Hutchinson (born December 1946) is an American legal scholar. After beginning his teaching career at the Georgetown University Law Center, Hutchinson joined the University of Chicago Law School in 1981. Currently, he is the William Rainey Harper Professor at the University of Chicago, a senior lecturer in law, and master of the undergraduate college's New Collegiate Division where he directs the Law, Letters, and Society program. His interests primarily lie in the field constitutional law, paying special attention to issues of race. He is best known within the legal community at large for his work as editor of the Law School's Supreme Court Review . [1]
Hutchinson graduated summa cum laude from Bowdoin College, studying briefly as a JD candidate at the University of Chicago Law School before attending Magdalen College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar in Jurisprudence, where he graduated with a B.A. and M.A. [1] Upon returning to the United States, he completed his formal studies at the University of Texas Law School, where he received an LLM. Hutchinson then served as a law clerk to Justice William O. Douglas and Justice Byron White of the Supreme Court of the United States. His biography of Byron "Whizzer" White [2] [3] was a New York Times 'Notable Book' for 1998. Hutchinson co-edited The Forgotten Memoir of John Knox: A Year in the Life of a Supreme Court Clerk in FDR's Washington in 2002, with David J. Garrow. [4] He was once married to Judge Diane Pamela Wood, who sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and who remains an academic colleague.
Hutchinson was one of several law faculty members who were called upon by various media sources to provide commentary about President Barack Obama's tenure teaching constitutional law at the school, and was largely supportive.
Byron Raymond "Whizzer" White was an American lawyer, jurist, and professional football player who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1962 until 1993. By his retirement, he was the Supreme Court's only sitting Democrat and the last-living member of the progressive Warren Court.
Robert Houghwout Jackson was an American lawyer, jurist, and politician who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1941 until his death in 1954. He had previously served as United States Solicitor General and United States Attorney General, and is the only person to have held all three of those offices. Jackson was also notable for his work as Chief United States Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals following World War II. Jackson developed a reputation as one of the best writers on the Supreme Court and one of the most committed to enforcing due process as protection from overreaching federal agencies.
Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld, in a 5–4 ruling, the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults, in this case with respect to homosexual sodomy, though the law did not differentiate between homosexual and heterosexual sodomy. It was overturned in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), though the statute had already been struck down by the Georgia Supreme Court in 1998.
Frederick Moore Vinson was an American attorney and politician who served as the 13th chief justice of the United States from 1946 until his death in 1953. Vinson was one of the few Americans to have served in all three branches of the U.S. government. Before becoming chief justice, Vinson served as a U.S. Representative from Kentucky from 1924 to 1928 and 1930 to 1938, as a federal appellate judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1938 to 1943, and as the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1945 to 1946.
The lists of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States cover the law clerks who have assisted the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States in various capacities since the first one was hired by Justice Horace Gray in 1882. The list is divided into separate lists for each position in the Supreme Court.
Diane Pamela Wood is an American attorney who serves as the director of the American Law Institute and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. She previously served as a circuit judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale is a Senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
William Henry Hastie Jr. was an American lawyer, judge, educator, public official, and civil rights advocate. He was the first African American to serve as Governor of the United States Virgin Islands, as a federal judge, and as a federal appellate judge. He served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and previously served as District Judge of the District Court of the Virgin Islands.
Thomas Gardiner Corcoran was an Irish-American legal scholar. He was one of several advisors in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's brain trust during the New Deal, and later, a close friend and advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson.
John Frush Knox (1907–1997) served as secretary and law clerk to United States Supreme Court Justice James Clark McReynolds from 1936 to 1937. After working at various law firms, he took over his family's mail-order business and then worked as an insurance adjuster. He is chiefly known for his memoir of his year spent working for Justice McReynolds.
Paul Abraham Freund was an American legal scholar. He taught for most of his life at Harvard Law School and is known for his writings on the United States Constitution and the Supreme Court of the United States.
William T. Dzurilla, formerly William T. D'Zurilla, is a retired American attorney. He was a law clerk for Justice Byron White of the United States Supreme Court from 1982 to 1983. He played a key role in the privatization of major state-owned businesses in Slovakia.
Richard Harvey Stern is an American attorney and law professor.
The second inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president of the United States was held on Wednesday, January 20, 1937, at the East Portico of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. This was the 38th presidential inauguration and marked the commencement of the second term of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president and John Nance Garner as vice president. It was the first inauguration to take place on January 20 per the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This was also the first time the vice president took the oath of office on the inaugural platform rather than in the Senate Chamber. The length of Roosevelt's term as president, and Garner's as vice president had already been shortened by 43 days.
Although he was president for less than three years, John F. Kennedy appointed two men to the Supreme Court of the United States: Byron White and Arthur Goldberg. Given the advanced age of Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter at the time of Kennedy's inauguration, speculation abounded over potential Kennedy nominations to the Supreme Court from the start of his presidency.
James Clark McReynolds was an American lawyer and judge from Tennessee who served as United States Attorney General under President Woodrow Wilson and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He served on the Court from 1914 to his retirement in 1941. McReynolds is best known today for his sustained opposition to the domestic programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his personality, which was widely viewed negatively and included documented elements of overt antisemitism and racism.
Paul Jeffrey Watford is an American lawyer who served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 2012 to 2023. In 2016, The New York Times identified Watford as a potential Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia. Watford resigned his judgeship in 2023 and became a partner at the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
Michael J. Gerhardt is the Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill. He is also the director of the Center on Law and Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is an expert on constitutional law, separation of powers, and the legislative process. He is a Scholar in Residence at the National Constitution Center and visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. On December 2, 2019, it was announced that Gerhardt would testify before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the constitutional grounds for presidential impeachment in the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump.
Howard Curtis Nielson Jr. is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Utah.