Who was the Chief Justice behind the Supreme Court decision where Robert Cooper Grier served as a juror, which denied a "negro" could an American citizenship?
Robert Cooper Grier Robert Cooper Grier (March 5, 1794 – September 25, 1870), was an American jurist who served on the Supreme Court of the United States. A Jacksonian Democrat from Pennsylvania who served from 1846 to 1870, Grier weighed in on some of the most important cases of the 19th century. As a rare Northern member of the majority in the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, Grier concurred that African Americans were not—and were never meant to be—citizens of the United States and that the property rights of slaveholders were clearly protected in the Constitution. However, Grier wrote the majority opinion in the 1863 Prize Cases, upholding Abraham Lincoln’s presidential power to institute Union blockades of Confederate ports and giving the Union Army a strategic advantage in the American Civil War.
Thornhill v. Alabama Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88 (1940), was a United States Supreme Court case heard in 1938 and decided in 1940. It reversed the conviction of the president of a local union for violating an Alabama statute that prohibited only labor picketing. Thornhill was peaceably picketing his employer during an authorized strike when he was arrested and charged. In reaching its decision, Associate Justice Frank Murphy wrote for the Supreme Court that the free speech clause protects speech about the facts and circumstances of a labor dispute. The statute in the case prohibited all labor picketing, but "Thornhill" added peaceful labor picketing to the area protected by free speech.