George Shiras, Jr.

George Shiras, Jr. ( born January 26, 1832 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, † August 2, 1924 ) was an American jurist who was, among other judges on the U.S. Supreme Court ( U.S. Supreme Court ).

Life

Shiras, son of a product originating in Scotland brewery owner and merchant, studied post-school at Yale University and graduated in 1853 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA ) from. After a subsequent postgraduate studies in law at the Law School of Yale University in 1855, he received the approval of lawyers in the state of Pennsylvania and was then nearly forty years as a lawyer in Dubuque and in Pittsburgh.

After the death of Joseph P. Bradley on 22 January 1892 he was appointed by U.S. President Benjamin Harrison as Assistant Judge at the United States Supreme Court and held that post for more than ten years, until his resignation on 23 February 1903. Successor was then the former U.S. Secretary of State and previous judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals William R. Day.

During his affiliation with the U.S. Supreme Court, he wrote the reasons for the verdict to 253 majority decisions and to 14 different opinions. He worked on the following major decisions:

• In the method of Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895 ) the Supreme Court had to decide on the scheme established by the Wilson - Gorman Tariff Act Income Tax Act 1894 ( Income Tax Act of 1894). The court ruled that introduced by that law income taxes on interest, dividends and rents are direct taxes and that the law against the Constitution of the United States contrary, as their survey must be carried out in the states in proportion to population.
• Plessy v. Ferguson in the process (1896 ), the court had to decide whether a law of the State of Louisiana, the separate compartments for citizens white and black skin color prescribed in railway trains, contrary to the U.S. Constitution. It decided that this was written by a Brown verdict with 7 to 1 judges vote and declared the provision of separate facilities for whites and blacks, under certain conditions permitted. That judgment was de facto the principle of separate but equal, that " separate but equal " established as the basis of racial segregation in the South. John Marshall Harlan took a minority opinion against this decision of principle. Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1954 was overruled by the judgment in the case of Brown v. Board of Education again.

After his death he was buried in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh. His son George Shiras III was both Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives for Pennsylvania as well as a respected photographer, especially through his two-volume work Hunting Wild Life with Camera and Flashlight: A Record of Sixty Five years' Visits to the Woods and Waters of North America was known, containing 960 photographs of nature.

Background literature

• Justice George Shiras, Jr., of Pittsburgh, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1892-1903, 1953