[4] At the same time, he advocated a broad interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, arguing that it protected a wide range of rights not expressly mentioned in the United States Constitution.

[7] The future justice also represented boxer Gene Tunney in a breach of contract suit brought by a would-be fight manager, a matter settled out of court.

[13][14] During World War II, Harlan volunteered for military duty, serving as a colonel in the United States Army Air Forces from 1943 to 1945.

[6] Harlan, a Presbyterian, maintained a New York City apartment, a summer home in Weston, Connecticut, and a fishing camp in Murray Bay, Quebec,[12] a lifestyle he described as "awfully tame and correct".

Harlan was nominated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 13, 1954, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated by Judge Augustus Noble Hand.

[19] Harlan's nomination came shortly after the Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education,[23] declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

[24] Unlike almost all previous Supreme Court nominees, Harlan appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions relating to his judicial views.

While he believed that the original intention of the Framers should play an important part in constitutional adjudication, he also held that broad phrases like "liberty" in the Due Process Clause could be given an evolving interpretation.

This view, in short, is that every major social ill in this country can find its cure in some constitutional principle and that this court should take the lead in promoting reform when other branches of government fail to act.

[33] He wrote the plurality opinion in Manual Enterprises, Inc. v. Day, ruling that photographs of nude men are not obscene, one of the first major victories for the early gay rights movement.

He subscribed to the doctrine that the clause not only provided procedural guarantees, but also protected a wide range of fundamental rights, including those that were not specifically mentioned in the text of the Constitution.

"[41] Under Harlan's approach, judges would be limited in the Due Process area by "respect for the teachings of history, solid recognition of the basic values that underlie our society, and wise appreciation of the great roles that the doctrines of federalism and separation of powers have played in establishing and preserving American freedoms".

[42] Harlan set forth his interpretation in an often cited dissenting opinion to Poe v. Ullman,[43] which involved a challenge to a Connecticut law banning the use of contraceptives.

[28] The Supreme Court has eventually adopted some elements of Harlan's approach, holding that only some Bill of Rights guarantees were applicable against the states—the doctrine known as selective incorporation.

However, under Chief Justice Earl Warren during the 1960s, an increasing number of rights were deemed sufficiently fundamental for incorporation (Harlan regularly dissented from these rulings).

[54]Harlan concurred in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan,[56] which required public officials suing newspapers for libel to prove that the publisher had acted with "actual malice."

"[58] When Harlan was a Circuit Judge in 1955,[59] he authorized the decision upholding the conviction of leaders of the Communist Party USA (including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn) under the Smith Act.

Later, when he was a Supreme Court justice, Harlan, however, wrote an opinion overturning the conviction of Communist Party activists as unconstitutional in the case of Yates v. United States.

[61] Harlan penned the majority opinion in Cohen v. California,[62] holding that wearing a jacket emblazoned with the words "Fuck the Draft" was speech protected by the First Amendment.

Likewise, he disagreed with Tinker v. Des Moines,[67] in which the Supreme Court ruled that students had the right to wear armbands (as a form of protest) in public schools.

[71] Harlan wrote the majority opinion in Leary v. United States—a case that declared the Marijuana Tax Act unconstitutional based on the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

In this case the Supreme Court held that eavesdropping on the petitioner's telephone conversation constituted a search in the meaning of the Fourth Amendment and thus required a warrant.

Harlan vigorously dissented, writing, "I had not expected to witness the day when the Supreme Court of the United States would render a decision which casts grave doubt on the constitutionality of the composition of the House of Representatives.

"[77] He proceeded to argue that the Court's decision was inconsistent with both the history and text of the Constitution; moreover, he claimed that only Congress, not the judiciary, had the power to require congressional districts with equal populations.

[74] Harlan was the sole dissenter in Reynolds v. Sims,[32] in which the Court relied on the Equal Protection Clause to extend the one man, one vote principle to state legislative districts.

He wrote: This Court, limited in function in accordance with that premise, does not serve its high purpose when it exceeds its authority, even to satisfy justified impatience with the slow workings of the political process.

[32]For similar reasons, Harlan dissented from Carrington v. Rash,[78] in which the Court held that voter qualifications were subject to scrutiny under the equal protection clause.

He claimed in his dissent, "the Court totally ignores, as it did in last Term's reapportionment cases ... all the history of the Fourteenth Amendment and the course of judicial decisions which together plainly show that the Equal Protection Clause was not intended to touch state electoral matters.

"[78] Similarly, Justice Harlan disagreed with the Court's ruling in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections,[79] invalidating the use of the poll tax as a qualification to vote.

[85] Harlan's extensive professional and Supreme Court papers (343 cubic feet) were donated to Princeton University, where they are housed at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library and open to research.