Robert Houghwout Jackson served as attorney general of the United States from 1940 to 1941 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Jackson also served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court but he is best known for his service as chief U.S. counsel at the Nuremberg trials following World War II. In this position, Jackson prosecuted a group of high-ranking Nazi leaders for committing war crimes.

Jackson was born on February 13, 1892 in Spring Creek, Pennsylvania. His family moved to Frewsburg, New York when Jackson was five years old, where his father operated a hotel and livery stable. After he graduated from high school in 1910, Jackson worked as a clerk in a local law office. Though he attended one year of law school, he returned to his legal apprenticeship the following year. This type of work had been a popular way of becoming a lawyer in the nineteenth...