The Volokh Conspiracy
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NY Times Obituary Confuses Justice John Marshal Harlan I and II
Philip B. Heymann, who died this week, did not clerk for JMH I.
On Tuesday, the New York Times published an obituary for Philip B. Heymann, a longtime DOJ attorney. As originally published, the article stated:
After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1960, he clerked at the Supreme Court for Associate Justice John M. Harlan, who was noted chiefly for his many dissents in cases that restricted civil liberties.
Whoops. On Wednesday, the article was appended with a correction:
An earlier version of this obituary misidentified the associate justice of the Supreme Court for whom Mr. Heymann clerked as a young law school graduate, and it mischaracterized the justice's reputation on the bench. He clerked for John M. Harlan II, not Justice Harlan's grandfather, John M. Harlan. And it was the elder Justice Harlan, not the grandson, who was noted for his many dissents in cases that restricted civil liberties.
Now the article states:
After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1960, he clerked at the Supreme Court for Associate Justice John M. Harlan II, .
The punctuation error is in the original.
On that point, it's good to know the Solicitor General was unwilling to commit that Plessy should have been overruled in 1897. More on this issue later.
