William J Brennan Jr

When Brennan graduated with a degree in economics in 1928 from Wharton, the personable Newark, NJ, young man embarked on a journey that would lead him to become one of the most revered and dominant U.S. Supreme Court justices. After law school at Harvard, Brennan entered the Army during World War II, rising to Colonel in 1945. Between 1949 and 1951 he was a judge on the New Jersey Superior Court and then that state’s Supreme Court before being appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, in 1956 to the U.S. Supreme Court. By the time he retired in July 1990, Brennan had ruled in 1,360 opinions, surpassing all but one justice in the court’s history.