J. Edwin Livingston (March 17, 1892 – October 15, 1971) was an American jurist and the Twenty-third Chief Justice of the

Alabama Supreme Court The Supreme Court of Alabama is the highest court in the state of Alabama. The court consists of a chief justice and eight associate justices. Each justice is elected in partisan elections for staggered six-year terms. The Supreme Court is house ...

from 1951 through 1971. He was born in

Notasulga, Alabama Notasulga is a town in Lee and Macon counties in the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census, the population of the town was 914. The portion in Lee County is part of the Auburn Metropolitan Area. According to the 1910 U.S. Census, it incorp ...

. Livingston attended the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now

Auburn University Auburn University (AU or Auburn) is a public land-grant research university in Auburn, Alabama. With more than 24,600 undergraduate students and a total enrollment of more than 30,000 with 1,330 faculty members, Auburn is the second largest uni ...

) and the

University of Alabama The University of Alabama (informally known as Alabama, UA, or Bama) is a Public university, public research university in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Established in 1820 and opened to students in 1831, the University of Alabama is the oldest and la ...

, where he received a law degree in 1918. After graduation, he served in the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

for the remainder of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Upon returning home, he set up a law practice in

Tuscaloosa, Alabama Tuscaloosa ( ) is a city in and the seat of Tuscaloosa County in west-central Alabama, United States, on the Black Warrior River where the Gulf Coastal and Piedmont plains meet. Alabama's fifth-largest city, it had an estimated population of 1 ...

, as well as serving as a professor of law at the University of Alabama from 1922 to 1940. Livingston was appointed an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama by Governor Frank M. Dixon on May 9, 1940, and was raised to Chief Justice on February 28, 1951, by Governor

Gordon Persons Seth Gordon Persons (February 5, 1902 – May 29, 1965) was an American Democratic politician who was the 43rd Governor of Alabama from 1951 to 1955. He was born and died in Montgomery, Alabama. The Dauphin Island Bridge south of Mobile ...

. Livingston was reelected Chief Justice three times, and retired from that position in 1971. Judge Livingston was a staunch segregationist, who in 1959 declared "I'm for segregation in every phase of life and I don't care who knows it ... I would close every school from the highest to the lowest before I would go to school with colored people."Jack W. Peltason, ''Fifty-Eight Lonely Men'' (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press 1971), 66 Livingston married Marie Wise in 1913, and together the couple had two sons, Willard and Edwin.

References

* Alabama Department of Archives and History.
Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justices: J. Ed Livingston
'. Accessed April 22, 2007. * Alabama Dept. of Archives and History. ''Alabama Official and Statistical Register, 1939''.
J. Ed Livingston's obituary
* Ancestry.com
Ancestry.com: J Ed Livingston in the 1940 census
'. Accessed January 13, 2012. 1892 births 1971 deaths People from Macon County, Alabama Auburn University alumni University of Alabama School of Law alumni University of Alabama faculty Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of Alabama 20th-century American judges {{Alabama-state-judge-stub