deaths
November 16, 1939
Pierce Butler, American lawyer and jurist (born 1866)
Pierce Butler (judge)
Pierce Butler was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1923 until his death in 1939. He is notable for being the first Supreme Court justice from Minnesota, and for being a Democrat appointed by a Republican president. He was a staunch conservative and was regarded as a part of the Four Horsemen, the conservative bloc that dominated the Supreme Court during the 1930s. A devout Catholic, he was also the sole dissenter in the case Buck v. Bell, though he did not write an opinion.