Elijah Barrett Prettyman Jr. was born in Washington, D. C. on June 1, 1925. During World War II, he served in the infantry in Europe. He graduated from Yale University in 1949 and became a reporter for The Providence Journal. He decided that studying jurisprudence would improve his earning potential as a reporter and received a law degree from the University of Virginia Law School. He decided to give up journalism for a legal career.
He achieved a clerk position at the Supreme Court. He clerked for Justices Robert H. Jackson, Felix Frankfurter and John M. Harlan. He played crucial behind the scenes roles in the Supreme Court's unanimous school-desegregation decision, the first expulsion by Congress of one of its members in more than a century, and the release of prisoners captured during the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. After leaving the clerk position, he worked for the law firm of Hogan Lovells for over 50 years. He argued 19 cases before the Supreme Court and represented Truman Capote, John Lennon and Katherine Anne Porter. He won an Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1962 for his true-crime book Death and the Supreme Court. He died on November 4, 2016 at the age of 91.
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