Judge John Marshall Harlan (Photo from the Library of Congress)
Originally H or Harrison Street, the 8th road west of Sheridan was renamed after Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan in 1903 to reflect the new U.S. Senator and Supreme Court Justice alphabet naming system.
Harlan was born in Kentucky in 1883. His father was a prominent local lawyer and politician. Harlan followed in his father’s footsteps, studying law at Centre College.
Harlan’s legal career began in Kentucky, where he served as a county judge and later as the Kentucky Attorney General. He played an active role in politics, supporting the Union during the Civil War and serving as a delegate to the 1868 Republican National Convention.
In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes nominated Harlan to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Harlan’s confirmation was not without controversy. Nevertheless, he was confirmed by the Senate and went on to have a long and noteworthy career with the court.
As a Justice, Harlan was known for his commitment to individual rights as well as his willingness to dissent from the Court’s majority opinions, earning him the nickname “The Great Dissenter.” He is probably best known for his lone dissent in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Court upheld racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine, paving the way for decades of “legal” Jim Crow segregation in the American South. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision was widely regarded as one of the worst in the Supreme Court’s long history. Harlan argued that this doctrine was fundamentally at odds with the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.
Harlan served on the Supreme Court until his death in 1911. His 33 year tenure on the court is the 6th longest.
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