J. Edwin Livingston (March 17, 1892 – October 15, 1971) was an American jurist and the Twenty-third Chief Justice of the

Alabama Supreme Court The Supreme Court of Alabama is the highest court in the state of Alabama. The court consists of a chief justice and eight associate justices. Each justice is elected in partisan elections for staggered six-year terms. The Supreme Court is hous ...

from 1951 through 1971. He was born in

Notasulga, Alabama Notasulga is a town in Macon County, Alabama, Macon and Lee County, Alabama, Lee counties in the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census, the population of the town was 914. The portion in Lee County is part of the Auburn Metropolitan Area. ...

. Livingston attended the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now

Auburn University Auburn University (AU or Auburn) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Auburn, Alabama, United States. With more than 26,800 undergraduate students, over 6,100 post-graduate students, and a tota ...

) and the

University of Alabama The University of Alabama (informally known as Alabama, UA, the Capstone, or Bama) is a Public university, public research university in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States. Established in 1820 and opened to students in 1831, the University of ...

, where he received a law degree in 1918. After graduation, he served in the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

for the remainder of

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. Upon returning home, he set up a law practice in

Tuscaloosa, Alabama Tuscaloosa ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, Tuscaloosa County in west-central Alabama, United States, on the Black Warrior River where the Gulf Coastal Plain, Gulf Coastal and Piedmont (United States), Piedm ...

, as well as serving as a professor of law at the University of Alabama from 1922 to 1940. Livingston was appointed an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama by Governor Frank M. Dixon on May 9, 1940, and was raised to Chief Justice on February 28, 1951, by Governor

Gordon Persons Seth Gordon Persons (February 5, 1902 – May 29, 1965) was an American Democratic politician who was the 43rd Governor of Alabama from 1951 to 1955. A relative moderate, Persons provided reforms to the state prison system, and limited po ...

. Livingston was reelected Chief Justice three times, and retired from that position in 1971. Judge Livingston was a staunch segregationist, who in 1959 declared "I'm for segregation in every phase of life and I don't care who knows it ... I would close every school from the highest to the lowest before I would go to school with colored people."Jack W. Peltason, ''Fifty-Eight Lonely Men'' (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press 1971), 66 Livingston married Marie Wise in 1913, and together the couple had two sons, Willard and Edwin.

References

* Alabama Department of Archives and History.
Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justices: J. Ed Livingston
''. Accessed April 22, 2007. * Alabama Dept. of Archives and History. ''Alabama Official and Statistical Register, 1939''.
J. Ed Livingston's obituary
* Ancestry.com
Ancestry.com: J Ed Livingston in the 1940 census
'. Accessed January 13, 2012. 1892 births 1971 deaths People from Macon County, Alabama Auburn University alumni University of Alabama School of Law alumni University of Alabama faculty Chief justices of the Supreme Court of Alabama 20th-century Alabama state court judges {{Alabama-state-judge-stub