Harold Hitz Burton

Infobox Senator |name=Harold H. Burton
nationality=American

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jr/sr and state=Senior Senator, Ohio
party=Republican
term=1941–1945
preceded=A. Vic Donahey
succeeded=James W. Huffman
order2=84th Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
term_start2=October 1, 1945
term_end2=October 13, 1958
nominator2= Harry S. Truman
predecessor2=Owen Josephus Roberts
successor2=Potter Stewart
date of birth=birth date|1888|6|22
place of birth=Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts
dead=dead
date of death=death date and age|1964|10|28|1888|6|22
place of death=Washington, D.C.
spouse=Selma Florence Smith, Married 1912
religion=Unitarian

Harold Hitz Burton (June 22, 1888 – October 28, 1964) served as the 45th mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, a member of the United States Senate and later Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was known as a dispassionate jurist who prized equal justice under the law.

He was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, to Alfred E. Burton and Anna Gertrude Hitz. His father was a Dean at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was also an explorer. He had accompanied Robert Peary on several expeditions to the North Pole. His mother was a daughter of the first Swiss Consul General to the United States. He was also a second cousin of J. Edgar Hoover on their mothers' side. Their common great-grandparents were Johannes (Hans) Hitz, first Swiss Consul General to the United States, and wife Anna Kohler.

Burton attended Bowdoin College, where his roommate and fellow Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity brother was Owen Brewster, who later became a U.S. Senator from Maine. He went on to Harvard Law School, graduating in 1912. After graduating, he practiced law in Ohio. He was a United States Army infantry officer during World War I, seeing heavy action in France and Belgium.

Burton served in the Ohio House of Representatives in 1929 and was the law director of Cleveland, Ohio before being elected Mayor of Cleveland in 1935, running as a Republican. He served until his election as United States Senator in 1941. It was in the Senate that he first met fellow senator Harry S. Truman. Burton served with Truman on the Senate investigative committee that oversaw the U.S. war effort during World War II, and the two got along well. Truman was elected Vice President of the United States in 1944, and assumed the presidency upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945.

When Supreme Court Associate Justice Owen J. Roberts retired later that year, Truman decided to appoint a Republican as a bipartisan gesture. Burton resigned from the Senate on September 30, 1945, when President Truman appointed him to the Court. His nomination was announced to the Senate and confirmed unanimously on the same day, without hearing or debate. Burton served until retiring on October 13, 1958. He suffered from Parkinson's disease in his later years. He died from complications arising from this, kidney failure and pulmonary trouble. According to Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren's papers, Burton was influential in bringing about the Supreme Court's unanimity in the landmark desegregation case, "Brown v. Board of Education".

Burton married Selma Florence Smith in 1912. They had four children: Barbara (Mrs. Charles Weidner), William (who served in the Ohio House of Representatives and was a noted trial lawyer), Deborah (Mrs. Wallace Adler), and Robert (a distinguished attorney and counsel to athletes).

The Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress holds an extensive collection of Burton's personal and judicial papers, including Supreme Court conference notes, which have been widely used by legal historians.

ee also

References

*Harold Hitz Burton Papers [http://library.bowdoin.edu/arch/mss/hhbg.shtml]
*Obituary from the "New York Times", October 29, 1964, pg 35.