Attorney General: Robert H. Jackson
Robert Houghwout Jackson was born in Spring Creek, Pennsylvania, on February 13, 1892. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Chautauqua Institute, a Bachelor of Laws degree from National University in 1938, and was admitted to the bar in 1913. He was president of the Western New York Federation of Bar Associations from 1928 to 1930, a member of the New York State Commission to Investigate the Administration of Justice, a member of the board of directors of the New York Emergency Script Corporation in 1933, and chairman of the National Conference of Bar Association Delegates from 1933 to 1934. He was general counsel for the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Internal Review in 1934. Jackson’s service in the Department of Justice included appointments as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Tax Division in 1936, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division in 1937, and Solicitor General of the United States in 1938.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Jackson as Attorney General of the United States on January 18,1940. He was appointed Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court on July 11, 1941, also by Roosevelt. At the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman appointed Jackson as the U.S. Representative in meetings with Great Britain, Russia, and France in order to negotiate agreement for the international trials of senior Nazi officials. Jackson was Chief Counsel for the United States at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, from 1945–1946. He was an author, lecturer, and a trustee of George Washington University and Union College. Robert Jackson died on October 9, 1954, in Washington, D.C.
Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1876, John C. Johansen was brought to the United States as an infant. He studied under Frank Duveneck at the Art Institute of Chicago. One of the leading portraitists of his day, during World War I he was commissioned to portray Allied leaders Ferdinand Foch, Georges Clemenceau, Woodrow Wilson, and Herbert Hoover. Johansen's portrait of Attorney General Jackson was painted in 1942. He died in 1964.