Alpheus Thomas Mason (September 18, 1899 – October 31, 1989) was an American legal scholar, political scientist, and biographer. He is best known for his biographies of United States Supreme Court justices, including Louis Brandeis, Harlan F. Stone, and William Howard Taft.
Early Life and Education
Mason was born on September 18, 1899, in Snow Hill, Maryland. He earned an A.B. from Dickinson College in 1920, followed by an A.M. and Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1921 and 1923, respectively. At Princeton, he studied under Edward Samuel Corwin, who became his mentor.
Academic Career
After receiving his Ph.D., Mason taught at Duke University (then Trinity College) for two years. In 1925, he joined the faculty at Princeton University, where he remained until his retirement in 1968. He held the McCormick Chair and was named McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence upon retirement. Following his retirement from Princeton, he continued teaching at fifteen other institutions, including Harvard, Dartmouth, Barnard College, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Virginia, until 1980.
Scholarly Work
Mason authored 22 books, including:
- Organized Labor and the Law (1925)
- Brandeis: Lawyer and Judge in the Modern State (1933)
- The Brandeis Way (1938)
- Bureaucracy Convicts Itself: The Ballinger-Pinchot Controversy of 1910 (1941)
- Brandeis: A Free Man's Life (1946)
- Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law (1956)
- The Supreme Court from Taft to Warren (1958)
- William Howard Taft: Chief Justice (1964)
His biography Brandeis: A Free Man's Life sold over 50,000 copies and remained on the best-seller list for five months in 1947. Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law received the American Library Association's Liberty and Justice Award and the Francis Parkman Prize in history.
Honors and Affiliations
Mason was one of the few political scientists to hold a visiting membership at the Institute for Advanced Study in the 1930s. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963 and served as vice president of the American Political Science Association. He received multiple honorary degrees, including an LL.D. from Princeton University (1974) and a Litt.D. from Brandeis University (1973).
Death
Mason died on October 31, 1989, at his home in Princeton, New Jersey, at the age of 90.
