HARLAN, JOHN MARSHALL American jurist, was born in Boyle county (Ky.), on June I, 1833. He graduated from Centre college, Danville (Ky.), in 1850, and at the law department of Transylvania university, Lexington, in 1853. He was county judge of Franklin county in 1858-59, was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress on the Whig ticket in 1859, and was elector on the Constitutional Union ticket in 186o.
On the outbreak of the Civil War he recruited and organized the loth Kentucky U.S. Volunteer Infantry, and served with it as colonel. Retiring from the army in 1863, he was elected by the Union Party attorney-general of the State, and was re-elected in 1865. In 1867 he removed to Louisville to practise law. He was the Republican candidate for governor in 1871 and in 1875, but was defeated on both occasions. He served as a member of the commission which was appointed by President Hayes early in to accomplish the recognition of one of the two existing State governments of Louisiana (q.v.) ; and he was a member of the Bering Sea tribunal which met in Paris in On Nov. 29, 1877, he became an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, a position which he filled with ability for the remainder of his life. He showed himself a liberal constructionist in opinions on the Civil Rights cases and in the interpretation of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution by advo cating increasing the power of the Federal Government. He sup ported the constitutionality of the income-tax clause in the Wilson tariff bill of 1894, and he drafted the decision of the court in the Northern Securities Company case which applied to railways the provisions of the Sherman anti-trust law. In 1889 he became a professor in the Law School of the Columbian university (af ter wards George Washington university). He died in Washington (D.C.), on Oct. 14, 1911.