That Man: Robert Jackson's Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt
IN DECEMBER, 1999, after William E. Jackson's death, members of his family found, in a closet of his Manhattan apartment, a folder labeled “Roosevelt Book.” Bill Jackson was the son of Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who had been an associate and intimate friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Jackson's acquaintance with Roosevelt dated back to 1912, when the former was a young lawyer and the latter, ten years Jackson's senior, an aspiring politician in New York state. In 1934 Roosevelt, now President of the United States, had asked Jackson, who by then had established a fulfilling and lucrative law practice in Jamestown, New York, to come to Washington to work for the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Jackson initially resisted the invitation, then tentatively agreed, and ended up prosecuting Andrew Mellon, former Secretary of the Treasury, for unpaid income taxes, a trial that garnered national attention. Three years later Jackson was Solicitor General of the United States; a year and half later was Roosevelt's Attorney General; and by July 1941 had been nominated to the Court by Roosevelt...