Path to the Supreme Court
Harold Hitz Burton — Bowdoin, Harvard Law, a decorated infantry officer of the Argonne — became Cleveland's 'Boy Scout mayor,' then an Ohio senator serving on the Truman Committee beside the man who would elevate him. In September 1945, for Roberts's (§74) seat, Truman reached across the aisle for the Republican Burton — the new president's first appointment, a deliberate gesture of bipartisanship — and the Senate confirmed him the next day without objection.
On the Supreme Court
Burton was the Court's workhorse-diarist: modest, exact, slow, and trusted by every faction — which is why his diary and conference notes are now a primary source for how Warren (§88) built the unanimous Brown, which Burton joined without hesitation. His own best opinion came in 1950: Henderson v. United States, ending the curtained 'colored' tables in railroad dining cars — decided the same day as Sweatt and McLaurin, the trio that foretold Brown. In Toolson he dissented with Reed (§77), unwilling to pretend organized baseball was not interstate commerce. Parkinson's disease forced him from the bench in 1958; he kept sitting on the D.C. Circuit as long as his body allowed, and died in 1964.
The Voting Record
How Burton voted in the 1,517 cases the Supreme Court Database records from the 1945 term through the 1958 term, using that database’s classification of each vote as liberal or conservative. The gold tick on each bar is the rate for the other justices sitting on those same cases.
Across the whole career Burton voted with Vinson more than with anyone else — the same side of the judgment in 76.1% of their 528 divided cases — and with Douglas least, at 37.7%. See the matrices →Compared against the 11 colleagues Burton shared at least 300 divided cases with.
And Burton ended 6.4 points more conservative relative to those colleagues than at the start of the modern record in 1946 — the 16th-largest shift of the 27 justices with a long enough record to measure. See who changed →
Coverage · Burton sat across the database’s 1946 join, so these figures pool its legacy and modern releases to cover the whole tenure — but the rank is computed on the 1946-onward record alone, because the justices ranked against have no record before then.
Source · The Supreme Court Database (Spaeth, Epstein, Nelson, Martin, et al.) · how these figures are made
Key Decisions
Henderson v. United States
1950Holding · Segregated railroad dining-car arrangements violated the Interstate Commerce Act.
Role · Burton wrote for a unanimous Court.
Decided the same day as Sweatt and McLaurin — the 1950 trilogy that set the table for Brown.
Read the opinion →Toolson v. New York Yankees
1953Holding · Baseball's judge-made antitrust exemption was reaffirmed, 7–2, on congressional inaction.
Role · Burton dissented, joined by Reed (§77): baseball was plainly interstate commerce.
The dissent nearly every later court and commentator has sided with — the exemption survives as an acknowledged anomaly.
Read the opinion →Go Deeper
Harold Hitz Burton is the Republican Harry Truman put on a Democratic Court — the bipartisan gesture of a president who had served beside him in the Senate. A former mayor of Cleveland and one-term senator, Burton was a moderate, methodical, unshowy justice for thirteen years (1945–1958), more notable for his meticulous diaries — a prime source on the inner workings of the Vinson Court — than for a body of landmark opinions. But he was a quiet part of the Court's turn on race: he wrote Henderson v. United States, ending segregation in railroad dining cars, and joined the unanimous Brown. He has no full biography. Approach him through the Friedman & Israel chapter, the dining-car and antitrust opinions, and the Society's capsule life.
The Bookshelf
The fullest short life of a justice with no full biography. The Chelsea House chapter recovers the career — the Cleveland reform mayor who ran the city through the Depression, the wartime senator who worked across the aisle, and the thirteen years on the Court — and is candid that Burton's importance lies less in his opinions than in his temperament and his extraordinary diaries. It is the honest starting point for a conscientious, self-effacing justice the landmark-hunting literature tends to skip.
The scholarly study of Burton's Court years by the historian Mary Frances Berry, built from his meticulous diaries — a close look at how a modest Ohio Republican actually made decisions across the Vinson and Warren Courts. Greenwood Press.
Burton's most consequential opinion, and part of the quiet dismantling of Jim Crow that preceded Brown. Decided the same day as Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma in 1950, Henderson held that the segregation of Black passengers in railroad dining cars violated the Interstate Commerce Act — chipping away at 'separate but equal' in interstate travel. A restrained, statutory opinion from a restrained justice, and a real contribution to the road that led to 1954. Free online.
A durable Burton majority at the intersection of antitrust and the press. A newspaper with a local monopoly had refused advertising to businesses that also used a new radio station; Burton held for the Court that using monopoly power to strangle a competitor violated the Sherman Act, even for a newspaper. Still cited in monopolization cases, it shows Burton at his best — careful, technically sure-footed, and unafraid to apply the law to a powerful local institution. Free online.
The reliable short account — the Cleveland mayoralty, the Senate, the bipartisan Truman appointment, and the diligent Court years — in a few well-sourced pages with a portrait. Good, too, on the famous Burton diaries, which historians treasure as a day-by-day record of the Vinson Court's private deliberations. The best compact, citable life. CQ Press for the SCHS.
The standard modern biographical encyclopedia of the Court: a signed essay on each of the 110 justices from Jay to Alito, alphabetically arranged, by a named scholar or journalist. Length tracks reputation — two pages for Thomas Johnson, three for Woods, eleven for Holmes — which is itself a rough map of who the literature has bothered with. It is not a substitute for a biography, and for the justices who have never had one it is often the most careful short account in print. Borrow it free at the Internet Archive.
The one-volume reference on the Court: more than a thousand signed entries on cases, doctrines, institutions and the justices, current to 2005. Cases and people share one alphabet, so a citation can be followed without changing volumes, and the biographical entries are short, written by specialists, and better than a longer sketch at carrying the historiography — what the argument about a justice currently is. Borrow it free at the Internet Archive.
The Reading Path
A researched route through the literature — in order.
- 1.The Friedman & Israel chapter — for the Cleveland mayor and Senate friend Truman rewarded
- 2.Henderson v. United States — for the dining-car case and the road to Brown
- 3.Lorain Journal Co. v. United States — for the durable antitrust opinion
- 4.The SCHS Illustrated Biographies — for the capsule life and the celebrated diaries
Where the Papers Are Kept
Ideas for Further Research
- The diarist. Burton's diaries are a historian's treasure — a nearly daily account of conferences, votes, and personalities on a Court riven by the Black–Frankfurter (§76/§78) feud. Use them to study the gap between the Court's public opinions and its private deliberations, and ask what the availability of such an inside record does, and should do, to how we write the Court's history.
- The bipartisan appointment. Truman, a Democrat, named the Republican Burton as a deliberate act of cross-party comity between Senate colleagues. Set the choice beside Stone's (§73) elevation by FDR and ask what became of the norm that a president might reach across the aisle for the Court — and whether Burton's quiet competence vindicates or undercuts the case for such appointments.
- The quiet civil-rights votes. Burton left no ringing civil-rights opinion, yet he wrote Henderson and joined the unanimous Brown, part of the Court's gathering turn against segregation. Recover the contributions of the 'minor' justices to the civil-rights revolution — the votes and statutory opinions that prepared the ground for the landmarks — and ask how much the story owes to figures history has forgotten. Seat lineage: O. Roberts §74 → Burton → Potter Stewart §92.