The man behind several of the ground breaking reforms in the legal system of the United States, Potter Stewart is primarily remembered for his contributions to criminal justice reforms and the Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. His father was a prominent lawyer cum politician and it was only natural that his son too chose to follow in his footsteps. A bright student, he graduated from the Yale Law School where he edited the ‘Yale Law Journal’. He entered private law practice after a stint in the Navy during the World War II. He was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and was chosen by President Dwight Eisenhower to replace the retiring judge of the Supreme Court in 1959. He proved to be an astute and practical lawyer with a pragmatic bent of mind. A popular lawyer who had influenced several important rulings before the court, he was considered the frontrunner to become the Chief Justice under the Nixon government; however Stewart himself had no such ambitions. He was best known for his statement "I know it when I see it" in relation to his judgment of obscenity regarding a particular case. Equally famous is his quote on capital punishment: “These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual”.