Tom Clark

For more information on Tom Clark, visit Britannica.com.

• Born: Sept. 23, 1899, Dallas, Tex.
• Education: University of Texas, B.A., 1921; LL.B., 1922
• Previous government service: civil district attorney, Dallas County, Tex., 1927–32; special assistant, U.S. Department of Justice, 1937–43; assistant U.S. attorney general, 1943–45; U.S. attorney general, 1945–49
• Appointed by President Harry S. Truman Aug. 2, 1949; replaced Frank Murphy, who died
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Aug. 18, 1949, by a 73–8 vote; retired June 12, 1967
• Died: June 13, 1977, New York, N.Y.

Tom Clark worked in the U.S. Department of Justice and became friendly with Harry Truman, a senator from Missouri. In 1944, Clark supported Truman's bid to become the Democratic candidate for Vice President. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945, Truman became President and he appointed Clark to be his attorney general. Four years later, Truman named Clark to the Supreme Court.

Both as attorney general and associate justice, Tom Clark supported government efforts to protect national security against Communist party activity in the United States. He also wrote opinions for the Court on landmark cases that protected individual rights. In Mapp v. Ohio (1961), for example, Clark declared that evidence seized illegally must be “excluded from” a state government's prosecution of a person accused of a crime. This “exclusionary rule” set forth by Clark in 1961 has endured as a guide to Court decisions.

Clark retired from the Supreme Court in 1967 when his son, Ramsay Clark, was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to the job of U.S. attorney general, a position that Tom Clark had once filled. Tom Clark left the Court to avoid any possibility of conflict of interest in cases brought to the Court by his son.

He continued to serve the federal government, however, until his death in 1977. He was a founder and the first director of the Federal Judicial Center, which conducts research and training programs to improve operations of the federal courts. He also occasionally served as a judge on various circuits of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

See also Mapp v. Ohio

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