Times Observer photos by Josh Cotton The Supreme Court building in Washington D.C. It sits just to the east of the Capitol and was constructed as a permanent home for the court in the 1930s.

Free speech and religion cases continue to be among the most prominent cases decided by the Supreme Court of the United States.

There’s the cake decorator and website designer in the marriage context, the football coach who wanted to pray on the field and the angry cheerleader who cussed out school officials off of school grounds and was punished for it.

Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson’s words in the 1943 case – West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette – then are just as relevant now as then.

“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.”

At issue in Barnette was a requirement that students stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. That was problematic for students in a Jehovah’s Witness family, who refused on religious grounds and were then sent home.

Spring Creek-born and Frewsburg-raised Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson’s bust in the hall of the Supreme Court in Washington D.C.

Jackson is one of this area’s most famous sons.

He was born on the family farmstead outside of Spring Creek in 1892 and raised in Frewsburg. The last justice of the Supreme Court to not graduate from law school, Jackson rose in Democratic political circles, culminating in his Solicitor General and then Attorney General in 1940.

The next year, FDR appointed Jackson to the Supreme Court where he would serve until his death in 1954.

He took leave from the court in the wake of World War II to serve as U.S. Chief Prosecutor in the cases brought against Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, playing a role in the very development of that

That’s all background you’ve probably read before because I’ve written it many times in various stories. Skip ahead though to 2013. That’s when Jackson’s legacy – in the form of a bronze bust – was enshrined in the halls of the Supreme Court.

The courtroom of the Supreme Court of the United States.

A 2013 story in the Jamestown Post-Journal tells how that came to be.

The bust was created by Dexter Benedict and this wasn’t his first piece depicting Jackson. In fact, he used an existing mold to create the new bust.

From the Post-Journal: According to Greg Peterson, one of the founders of the Robert H. Jackson Center and a current board member, the son and daughter of Jackson, as well as other family members, were present for the dedication, and they acknowledged the statue’s likeness to their father, which is one of the reasons why Benedict was asked to make the bust.

“What I’ve found most fascinating is that the family members have found favor with it, and they would have much greater knowledge of the likeness portrayed than anyone – if they do, then we should as well,” Peterson told the Post-Journal.

“When Peterson confirmed that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. had agreed to speak at the Jackson center, he presented to the Supreme Court the possibility of the Jackson Center commissioning and donating a bust sculpted by Benedict to be given to Roberts for the benefit of the United States Supreme Court. The goal, said Peterson, was to have a bust of Jackson permanently memorialized in the United States Supreme Court.”

“I think it’s a huge accomplishment and a real tribute to the legacy of Robert H. Jackson that the U.S. Supreme Court is willing to accept it, because they do not have busts of every Supreme Court Justice,” Peterson said in 2013. “Here’s an individual who was raised, worked and lived in Chautauqua County, and to have his likeness be permanently ensconced in the United States Supreme Court is a real tribute to him and everything he means.

The article also included background on the sculptor.

“Benedict, who was raised near Oswego, completed an undergraduate degree in art in Kansas before finishing a master’s in sculpture at University of North Carolina at Greensboro and ultimately moving back to Penn Yann,” the Post-Journal detailed. “But, Benedict didn’t start out studying sculpture. He started a graduate program in painting and was asked by an advisor to take a course outside the painting discipline, which he did, and ended up getting so interested that he quit painting to go full-time into sculpture.

“There are different means of making sculpture, but I guess you’d call me a modeler who works with clay,” Benedict said. “I take the likeness of someone who can sit for a portrait, or in the case of Justice Jackson, I worked from photographs. Then I develop the full-size piece in clay and make plaster molds in which I cast a thin wax. Everything you want it to be is developed in the wax. You put it into a kiln so all the wax melts out and then molten bronze is poured in. It’s called the lost wax process.”

“I’m very pleased with it,” said Benedict. “This will be my first piece at the Supreme Court, and I’m excited.

“This is a wonderful opportunity as a sculptor to have a piece installed at the Supreme Court. It’s a great pleasure and an honor to be doing a portrait bust of Justice Jackson, who was an outstanding figure.”

Two hallways at the Supreme Court are dedicated to depictions of former justices.

A word about where this story came from: We took a family vacation to the DC area earlier this year and I couldn’t help but notice many county and regional connections in the places we visited. So I thought I’d bring those stories – and photos – back.