__NOTOC__
Alpheus Thomas Mason (September 18, 1899October 31, 1989) was an American legal scholar and biographer. He wrote several biographies of justices of the
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...
, including
Louis Brandeis
Louis Dembitz Brandeis ( ; November 13, 1856 – October 5, 1941) was an American lawyer who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to ...
,
Harlan F. Stone, and
William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857March 8, 1930) served as the 27th president of the United States from 1909 to 1913 and the tenth chief justice of the United States from 1921 to 1930. He is the only person to have held both offices. ...
.
Alpheus Thomas Mason was born on September 18, 1899, in
Snow Hill, Maryland.
He graduated from
Dickinson College
Dickinson College is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1773 as Carlisle Grammar School, Dickinson was chartered on September 9, 1783, ...
with an AB in 1920 and an AM and PhD from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
in 1921 and 1923, respectively.
At Princeton, he grew close with
Edward Samuel Corwin, who "became
ismentor and also his benefactor and friend".
Mason was on the
Duke University
Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...
faculty for two years after receiving his PhD.
In 1925, he came back to Princeton where he remained until his retirement in 1968.
At Princeton, he held the McCormick chair and was named the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence when he retired.
He continued teaching at other colleges and universities until 1980.
He died on October 31, 1989, at his home in
Princeton, New Jersey
The Municipality of Princeton is a Borough (New Jersey), borough in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey, Borough of Princeton and Pri ...
.
Publications
* ''Organized Labor and the Law'' (1925)
* ''Brandeis: Lawyer and Judge in the Modern State'' (1933)
* ''Bureaucracy Convicts Itself: The Ballinger-Pinchot Controversy of 1910'' (1941)
* ''The Brandeis Way'' (1938)
* ''Brandeis: A Free Man's Life'' (1946)
* ''Security through Freedom: American Political Thought and Practice'' (1955)
* ''Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law'' (1956)
* ''The Supreme Court from Taft to Warren'' (1958)
* ''In Quest of Freedom: American Political Thought and Practice'' (1959)
* ''The Supreme Court: Palladium of Freedom'' (1962)
*
The States Rights Debate: Antifederalism and the Constitution' (1964, second edition 1972)
* ''William Howard Taft: Chief Justice'' (1964)
Citations
Works cited
*
*
Further reading
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mason, Alpheus T.
1899 births
1989 deaths
20th-century American academics
20th-century American biographers
20th-century American male writers
Dickinson College alumni
Writers from Princeton, New Jersey
People from Snow Hill, Maryland
Princeton University alumni
Princeton University faculty