SANTA CRUZ, CALIF. -- J. Lee Rankin, 88, who served as the U.S. solicitor general under President Dwight D. Eisenhower and chief counsel to the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, died here June 26 after a series of strokes.

He joined the Justice Department in 1953. The most celebrated case he was involved in was Brown v. Board of Education, which produced the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed school segregation. He argued for the government that segregation was wrong.

In 1956, Mr. Rankin became solicitor general, the No. 3 job at the Justice Department. He went on to argue dozens of cases before the nation's highest court.

After the assassination of President Kennedy, Mr. Rankin served as chief counsel to the Warren Commission. The commission's 800-page report, issued in 1964, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

Advertisement

The next year, Mr. Rankin was named New York City's corporation counsel, the city's chief attorney. He retired from that post in the mid-1970s.

Mr. Rankin, a native of Hartington, Neb., was a 1930 graduate of the University of Nebraska law school. He practiced law in Lincoln for 22 years before coming to Washington and joining the Justice Department.

He had been active in Nebraska Republican politics. In 1952, he managed Eisenhower's presidential campaign in Nebraska.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZK6zr8eirZ5nnKSworiOanBybl9lg3B%2BmGicoquVo7Www8SrZKynnJ6wqsDOq2SgnZ6av6K4jKNkpZ2VYr%2BiusqipWacmZrAbq3TZpignV1thXB%2BxZ5wnp2Tbnp4g8BsZG2bY2p6ea2RnWSbnWGWfnZ8xXBvm2hf