Protecting Fundamental Rights through Procedural Due Process
By Ashley C. DeGennaro
In her time at Albany Law, Ashley served as a Subeditor and Associate Editor of the Albany Law Review and participated in the Domenick L. Gabrielli Appellate Advocacy Competition. She served as both a Sponsler Fellow Teaching Assistant for Federal Civil Procedure with Dean Connie Mayer, and a Constitutional Law Teaching Assistant for Professor Vincent Bonventre. She also served as a Judicial Intern to the U.S. District Court Judge Mae A. D’Agostino, of the Northern District of New York.
Since her admission to the bar earlier this year, Ashley has been working as an Associate Attorney at Monaco Cooper Lamme & Carr in Albany.
Justice Robert H. Jackson served as an associate justice on the United States Supreme Court from 1941 to his death in 1954. In addition to his work on the Court, Jackson is widely known for his work as Chief Prosecutor for the United States at the Nuremberg Trial, which he regarded as the most important work he had accomplished in his life.
Throughout his career, Jackson was a champion for due process, an ideal that did not waver throughout his time on the Supreme Court, nor in his time as a prosecutor at Nuremberg. During his time on the Court, Jackson was able to recognize the tensions between the government’s interest in maintaining national security and the individual’s interest in preserving personal liberties. He was a zealous advocate of fairness in the legal system and desired to limit the imposition on individual liberties, despite the presence of both national and international issues which caused concern over national security. Throughout his lifetime of service, Jackson helped sculpt the future of international law as it is known today.
This paper discusses Justice Jackson’s jurisprudence during his time as Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials and also as an associate justice on the Supreme Court. This paper begins by analyzing Jackson’s advocacy for fairness and due process on the international stage at Nuremberg, a historical landmark in international law. This paper then analyzes Jackson’s commitment to such ideals on the national stage during his time on the Supreme Court through cases such as Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer and Korematsu v. United States. As a whole, the paper will seek to explore the work of Justice Jackson and his commitment to ensuring due process for every individual in the court system, regardless of nationality.
_________________
To read the paper, open HERE.
