Before a gathering of the White House Press corps on March 21, 1930, President Herbert Hoover announced his nomination for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court to fill a vacancy unexpectedly created by the death of Edward T. Sanford. His nominee was forty-four year old native North Carolinian John J. Parker, a member since 1925 of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Within days of the nomination organized labor and its allies in Congress and the press unleashed withering attacks on a single judicial opinion authored by Parker. In the process, the priority of issues raised in that case was dramatically inverted. The foremost issue, federal jurisdiction, became subordinated to the scope of an injunctive decree, an issue of secondary importance. Thus, the nominee's three year old opinion in International Union, United Mine Workers of America v. Red Jacket Consolidated Coal and Coke Company became the catalyst for transforming him from relative obscurity into a symbol of anti-labor conservatism.