John Marshall Harlan II - Retirement and Death

Retirement and Death

John M. Harlan's health began to deteriorate towards the end of his career. His eyesight began to fail during the late 1960s. To cover this, he would bring materials to within an inch of his eyes, and have clerks and his wife read to him (once when the Court took an obscenity case, a chagrined Harlan had his wife read him Lady Chatterley's Lover). Gravely ill, he retired from the Supreme Court on September 23, 1971.

Harlan died from spinal cancer three months later, on December 29, 1971. He was buried at the Emmanuel Church Cemetery in Weston, Connecticut. President Richard Nixon considered nominating Mildred Lillie, a California appeals court judge, to fill the vacant seat; Lillie would have been the first female nominee to the Supreme Court. However, Nixon decided against Lillie's nomination after the American Bar Association found Lillie to be unqualified. Thereafter, Nixon nominated William Rehnquist (a future Chief Justice), who was confirmed by the Senate.

Despite his many dissents, Harlan has been described as one of the most influential Supreme Court justices of the twentieth century. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960. Harlan's extensive professional and Supreme Court papers (343 cubic feet) were donated to Princeton University, where they are housed at the Seely G. Mudd Manuscript Library and open to research. Other papers repose at several other libraries. Ethel Harlan, his wife, outlived him by only a few months and died on June 12, 1972. She suffered from the Alzheimer's disease for the last seven years of her life.