John Marshall Harlan (June 1, 1833 – October 14, 1911) was an American lawyer and politician who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1877 until his death in 1911.

He was the sole dissenter in both the Civil Rights Cases (1883) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which permitted state and private actors to engage in ethnic segregation.

[4] According to historian Allyson Hobbs, Robert became highly successful, making a fortune in the California Gold Rush before returning east and settling in Cincinnati, Ohio.

[8][9] A member of the Whig Party like his father, Harlan got an early start in politics when, in 1851, he was offered the post of adjutant general of the state by governor John L.

The following year, he renounced his allegiance to the Know Nothings and joined the state's Opposition Party, serving as their candidate in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Democrat William E. Simms for the seat in Kentucky's 8th congressional district.

[13] In the secession crisis that followed Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln's victory in the 1860 election, Harlan sought to prevent Kentucky from seceding.

In one notable incident, Harlan personally led efforts to transport supplies across the Rolling Fork River after Confederate forces burned the bridge, earning commendation for his resourcefulness and determination.

This skirmish successfully disrupted Morgan’s attempt to destroy critical railroad bridges, preserving vital Union supply lines.

Harlan vowed to resign if President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which he denounced as "unconstitutional and null and void" when it took effect on January 1, 1863.

Harlan’s resignation came after the sudden death of his father on March 6, 1863, prompting him to leave the army to care for his family and resume his legal and political career.

In the fall of 1861, during an encounter near Elizabethtown, Harlan and his unit came across Confederate General Basil Duke, who was traveling incognito in civilian clothes to visit his wife in Lexington.

[21] Though still a committed unionist, he opposed Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and supported Democratic candidate George B. McClellan's unsuccessful campaign in the 1864 presidential election.

[25] Though Harlan was considered for several positions in the new administration, most notably Attorney General, initially the only job he was offered was as a member of a commission sent to Louisiana to resolve disputed statewide elections there.

[32] Though Harlan's nomination prompted some criticism from Republican Stalwarts, he was confirmed unanimously by the Senate on November 29, 1877,[31] and took the judicial oath of office on December 10, 1877.

[34] When Harlan began his service, the Supreme Court faced a heavy workload that consisted primarily of diversity and removal cases, with only a few constitutional issues.

Beginning in the 1880s, the Supreme Court increasingly began to adopt a laissez-faire philosophy, striking down economic regulations while at the same time allowing states to curtail the rights of African Americans.

[40] Though Harlan believed the Court had the power to review state and federal actions on a broad array of topics, he tended to oppose judicial activism in favor of deference to legislatures.

[citation needed] Harlan was one of four justices to file a dissenting opinion in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895), which struck down a federal income tax levied by the Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act of 1894.

In his dissent, he wrote that "the common government of all the people is the only one that can adequately deal with a matter which directly and injuriously affects the entire commerce of the country.

"[48] Harlan, the lone dissenting justice, strongly disapproved of the majority opinion, writing that "the judgement this day rendered, will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott Case."

Fuller and Harlan argued that the principle of jus sanguinis (that is, the concept of a child inheriting their father's citizenship by descent regardless of birthplace) had been more pervasive in U.S. legal history since independence.

[55] In Hawaii v. Mankichi (1903) his opinion stated: "If the principles now announced should become firmly established, the time may not be far distant when, under the exactions of trade and commerce, and to gratify an ambition to become the dominant power in all the earth, the United States will acquire territories in every direction... whose inhabitants will be regarded as 'subjects' or 'dependent peoples,' to be controlled as Congress may see fit... which will engraft on our republican institutions a colonial system entirely foreign to the genius of our Government and abhorrent to the principles that underlie and pervade our Constitution."

[citation needed] Harlan wrote the majority opinion in Northern Securities Co. v. United States, the first time the Court upheld the use of the Sherman Antitrust Act to break up a large corporation.

In his dissent in Hodges v. United States (1906), Harlan reiterated his belief that the Thirteenth Amendment empowered Congress to protect African Americans from discrimination and violence.

[citation needed] In his partial dissent in the 1911 case of Standard Oil Company of New Jersey v. United States, Harlan argued against the Court's establishment of the rule of reason, which held that in some extenuating circumstances a trust should not be broken up even if it has a monopoly.

[62] Harlan was fervently religious, and legal scholar James W. Gordon argued that his faith ”was the most important lens through which he viewed the people and events of his life”.

[63][65] During his tenure as a justice, he was an elder at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.,[66] and there he taught a Sunday school class of middle-aged men from 1896 until his death in 1911.

[9][66] Harlan was largely forgotten in the decades after his death, but his reputation began to improve in the mid-twentieth century, and many scholars now consider him to be one of the greatest Supreme Court justices of his era.

[69] Historian D. Grier Stephenson writes that "more than any justice with whom he served, Harlan understood the Reconstruction Amendments to establish a nationally protected right against racial discrimination, although it is a measure of the Court that he frequently articulated those promises in dissent.

"[71] Harlan's view that the Fourteenth Amendment made the provisions of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states has also largely been adopted by the Supreme Court.