Robert H. Jackson: From Spring Creek Farm to Nuremberg

On a family farm near this spot, on February thirteenth, eighteen ninety-two, Robert Houghwout Jackson was born. He attended Albany Law School for only a year and never earned a degree, instead reading law in a Jamestown office, then building a career that took him to the highest reaches of American government. He served as Solicitor General and then Attorney General under Franklin Roosevelt before joining the Supreme Court in nineteen forty-one, where he sat until his death in nineteen fifty-four.

But the role that defined his legacy came in nineteen forty-five and nineteen forty-six, when he served as chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, helping establish that individuals, including heads of state, could be held legally accountable for crimes against humanity. His opening statement at Nuremberg remains one of the great documents of international law.