Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
This is a wonderful occasion for Jamestown and for all of us who are lucky enough to be here and see the unveiling of this absolutely handsome and strong statue of Justice Jackson. We're remembering today a product of this community and of its public schools. The most treasured honor that anyone can receive is one that comes from one's own town, from those who knew the honorary first and best, so it is today, Robert Jackson, one of the finest justices ever to sit on the bench of the United States Supreme Court, grew up on a farm close to Jamestown. It was here that he attended the Jamestown elementary and high school that he married, had his children and practice law. It was here that he spoke in 1935. At the dedication of the new Jamestown high school building, he said them. If you believe as I believe that democracy is the form of government best adapted to our people, then you must regard the public school as the most fundamental concern of our society. Democracy well.

Democracy will always call most of its leaders from the ranks of humble man, and to equip them It must provide free education to the sons and daughters of disadvantaged homes. Robert Jackson was born as you heard in 1892, I thought it was in Pennsylvania, not New York. Early in his life, the family did move to a farm in this area. His father was a farmer, a lumber man and a stock breeder. He advised his son Robert to become a doctor. Instead, on graduating from Jamestown High School, Jackson read law in a Jamestown Law Office, spent one year in Albany law school, and was admitted to the New York bar at age 21. Now, this is the last Justice of the Supreme Court to have gotten there without ever going to law school. That's an amazing record.

Justice Jackson was a voracious reader of the classics of biography and history. He practiced law in this city successfully, and he married Irene Allison heart of nearby Kingston. And there are two children here today. William and Mary Margaret, also grew up in this area. Justice Jackson served as president of the Jamestown Bar Association, chairman of the American Bar National Conference of delegates, and it was President Franklin Roosevelt who persuaded a reluctant Jackson to leave Jamestown and go to Washington DC, as you've heard his first job there being general counsel to the Internal Revenue Service, and he subsequently served as you also heard in the Department of Justice, heading its tax division, and then heading the antitrust division. In 1938. President Roosevelt appointed Jackson as Solicitor General of the United States, he argued many cases successfully before the United States Supreme Court and that capacity. You know, the Solicitor General is the nation's lawyer. And Justice Brandeis who was on the court so admired Jackson's work as Solicitor General, that he said Jackson should be Solicitor General for life. But of course, he wasn't because the president then appointed Jackson as attorney general in 1940. And in 1941, as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He served in that capacity for 13 years until the year of his death in 1954. Now for a lawyer or a judge, reading a Jackson, a Supreme Court opinion is a special treat. He wrote always with clarity, with style and with persuasion. his opinions are just studied with wonderful passages and quotes. For example, he wrote up the court that we are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible because we are final. He wrote strongly in support of individual liberties and an opposition to arbitrary government action. In his opinion for the court and Board of Education versus Barnett, which held a school child may not be compelled against his will to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. He said, the very purpose of the Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of public controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majority's and of officials in the Korematsu case, upholding the wartime confinement of Japanese Americans and relocation camps. Justice Jackson dissented, saying now with any fundamental assumption underlies our system. It is that guilt is personal, not inheritable. And of course, he was justified many years later, by the common assumption that that opinion was the majority opinion was wrong, and Congress finally rectified it. Many, many years later, President Roosevelt had promised to nominate Justice Jackson as Chief Justice when Chief Justice stone retired, but it never came to pass. President Roosevelt died, and was succeeded, of course by President Truman, Truman as Justice Jackson to serve as chief prosecutor of the Nazi war criminals, and Norenberg in 1945. Justice Jackson recognize the enormous importance of a successful effort to collect evidence and expose to the world, the extent and the enormity of the Holocaust. Jackson believe that the long months he spent in Nuremberg were the most important, enduring and constructive of his life. Nuremberg at that time was, in his words, in terrible shape. After 10 months in this place, and 17,000 transcript pages of testimony 19 of 21 defendants were convicted and sentenced.

As Jackson put up, the evidence is there with such authenticity and in such detail, that there can be no responsible denial of these crimes in the future. And no tradition of martyrdom of the Nazi leaders can arise among informed people. And he hoped to create a precedent that would make explicit said that to persecute, oppress and do violence to individuals, or to minorities, on political, racial or religious grounds, is an international crime. Today 50 plus years later, the world is again witnessing an attempt to apply that precedent in new war crimes proceedings in Brussels, and in Rwanda, to serve again, as the voice of human decency, following the unspeakable atrocities in Rwanda and in Bosnia Herzegovina. We're following the path beaten by Robert Jackson for the protection of basic human liberties. Robert Jackson is a product of this wonderful community of its soil of its people, its public schools. It was here that he learned his lifelong curiosity for knowledge and inspiration to seek self improvement by hard work and the courage to take responsibility. He knew education was not the formal years of study, but a lifelong process. With your statue of this great man, you will help everyone who sees it to further his or her own inspiration, and his or her own self improvement. Congratulations to Jamestown and to all of you. Thank you.