Justice hugo black biography report

Black authored the court's majority opinion in Korematsu v. The decision is an example of Black's belief in the limited role of the judiciary; he validated the legislative and executive actions that led to internment, saying "it is unnecessary for us to appraise the possible reasons which might have prompted the order to be used in the form it was".

Black also tended to favor law and order over civil rights activism. For example, he dissented in multiple cases reversing convictions of sit-in protesters, arguing to limit the scope of the Civil Rights Act. Black opposed the actions of some civil rights and Vietnam War protesters and believed that legislatures first, and courts second, should be responsible for alleviating social wrongs.

Black once said he was "vigorously opposed to efforts to extend the First Amendment's freedom of speech beyond speech", to conduct. Black took an absolutist approach to First Amendment jurisprudence, believing the first words of the Amendment that said "Congress shall make no law Black would write that the First Amendment is "wholly 'beyond the reach' of federal power to abridge I do not believe that any federal agencies, including Congress and the court, have power or authority to subordinate speech and press to what they think are 'more important interests.

He believed that the First Amendment erected a metaphorical wall of separation between church and state. During his career Black wrote several important opinions relating to church-state separation. He delivered the opinion of the court in Everson v. Board of Education , which held that the establishment clause was applicable not only to the federal government, but also to the states.

In four bar applicant appeals to the Supreme Court, Black advanced the argument that a person's political affiliation or beliefs, without action, was not enough to establish evidence of bad moral character. Black argued in Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners that New Mexico could not bar Schware from becoming a lawyer because he might have, at one time, consorted with Communist causes.

Schware was, in fact, a decorated veteran who fought in World War II. Black reaffirmed this position in Konigsberg v. State Bar of California , where a majority of the court sided with Black. However, in both Konigsberg v. State Bar of California II , and In re Anastaplo , the majority of justices, over Black's vigorous dissent, determined that a person who refused to answer whether they had been a member of an organization on the attorney general's Subversive Organizations List could be denied admission to the bar on the basis of bad character.

Anastaplo has not indicated, even remotely, a belief that this country is an oppressive one in which the 'right of revolution' should be exercised. Quite the contrary, the entire course of his life, as disclosed by the record, has been one of devotion and service to his country—first, in his willingness to defend its security at the risk of his own life in time of war and, later, in his willingness to defend its freedoms at the risk of his professional career in time of peace.

Black's majority opinion in McCollum v. Board of Education held that the government could not provide religious instruction in public schools. In Torcaso v. Watkins , he delivered an opinion which affirmed that the states could not use religious tests as qualifications for public office. Similarly, he authored the majority opinion in Engel v. Vitale , which declared it unconstitutional for states to require the recitation of official prayers in public schools.

Justice Black is often regarded as a leading defender of First Amendment rights such as the freedom of speech and of the press. Thus, in New York Times Co. United States , he voted to allow newspapers to publish the Pentagon Papers despite the Nixon Administration 's contention that publication would have security implications. In his concurring opinion, Black stated:.

In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people.

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. The word 'security' is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. He rejected the idea that the government was entitled to punish "obscene" speech. Likewise, he argued that defamation laws abridged the freedom of speech and were therefore unconstitutional.

Most members of the Supreme Court rejected both of these views; Black's interpretation did attract the support of Justice Douglas. However, he did not believe that individuals had the right to speak wherever they pleased. He delivered the majority opinion in Adderley v. Florida , controversially upholding a trespassing conviction for protesters who demonstrated on government property.

He also dissented from Tinker v. Des Moines , in which the Supreme Court ruled that students had the right to wear armbands as a form of protest in schools, writing:. While I have always believed that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments neither the State nor the Federal Government has any authority to regulate or censor the content of speech, I have never believed that any person has a right to give speeches or engage in demonstrations where he pleases and when he pleases.

Moreover, Black took a narrow view of what constituted "speech" under the First Amendment; for him, "conduct" did not deserve the same protections that "speech" did. New York , he wrote: "It passes my belief that anything in the Federal Constitution bars a State from making the deliberate burning of the American flag an offense. California , in which the court held that wearing a jacket emblazoned with the words "Fuck the Draft" was speech protected by the First Amendment.

He joined Justice Harry Blackmun 's dissent, which asserted that this activity "was mainly conduct, and little speech". As a justice, Black held the view that the court should literally enforce constitutional guarantees, especially the First Amendment free speech clause. He was often labeled an 'activist' because of his willingness to review legislation that arguably violated constitutional provisions.

Black maintained that literalism was necessary to cabin judicial power, which informed his dissent in Anastaplo. Black adopted a narrower interpretation of the Fourth Amendment than many of his colleagues on the Warren Court. He dissented from Katz v. United States , in which the court held that warrantless wiretapping violated the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure.

He argued that the Fourth Amendment only protected tangible items from physical searches or seizures. Thus, he concluded that telephone conversations were not within the scope of the amendment, and that warrantless wiretapping was consequently permissible. Justice Black originally believed that the Constitution did not require the exclusion of illegally seized evidence at trials.

In his concurrence to Wolf v. Colorado , he claimed that the exclusionary rule was "not a command of the Fourth Amendment but Ohio , which applied it to state as well as federal criminal investigations. In his concurrence, he indicated that his support was based on the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of the right against self-incrimination, not on the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures.

He wrote, "I am still not persuaded that the Fourth Amendment, standing alone, would be enough to bar the introduction into evidence In other instances, Black took a fairly broad view of the rights of criminal defendants. He joined the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Miranda v. Arizona , which required law enforcement officers to warn suspects of their rights prior to interrogations, and consistently voted to apply the guarantees of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth , and Eighth Amendments at the state level.

Black was the author of the landmark decision in Gideon v. Wainwright , which ruled that the states must provide an attorney to an indigent criminal defendant who cannot afford one. Before Gideon , the court had held that such a requirement applied only to the federal government. One of the most notable aspects of Justice Black's jurisprudence was the view that the entirety of the federal Bill of Rights was applicable to the states.

Originally, the Bill of Rights was binding only upon the federal government, as the Supreme Court ruled in Barron v. Baltimore According to Black, the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in , "incorporated" the Bill of Rights, or made it binding upon the states as well. In particular, he pointed to the Privileges or Immunities Clause , "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.

Black first expounded this theory of incorporation when the Supreme Court ruled in Adamson v. California that the Fifth Amendment 's guarantee against self-incrimination did not apply to the states. It was during this period of time that Hugo Black became a disciple of John Lilburne and his claim of 'freeborn rights'. However, it never achieved the support of a majority of the court.

The Supreme Court never accepted the argument that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the entirety of the Bill of Rights. For the most part, during the s, s, and s, only First Amendment rights such as free exercise of religion and freedom of speech were deemed sufficiently fundamental by the Supreme Court to be incorporated. However, during the s, the court under Chief Justice Warren took the process much further, making almost all guarantees of the Bill of Rights binding upon the states.

Today, the only parts of the first eight amendments that have not been extended to the states are the Third and Seventh Amendments, the grand jury clause of the Fifth Amendment , the Eighth Amendment 's protection against excessive bail , and the guarantee of the Sixth Amendment , as interpreted, that criminal juries be composed of 12 members.

Justice Black was well known for his rejection of the doctrine of substantive due process. Most Supreme Court Justices accepted the view that the due process clause encompassed not only procedural guarantees, but also "fundamental fairness" and fundamental rights. Thus, it was argued that due process included a "substantive" component in addition to its "procedural" component.

Black, however, believed that this interpretation of the due process clause was unjustifiably broad. In his dissent to Griswold , he charged that the doctrine of substantive due process "takes away from Congress and States the power to make laws based on their own judgment of fairness and wisdom, and transfers that power to this Court for ultimate determination".

In his dissent to In re Winship , he analyzed the history of the term "due process of law", and concluded: "For me, the only correct meaning of that phrase is that our Government must proceed according to the 'law of the land'—that is, according to written constitutional and statutory provisions as interpreted by court decisions. Black's view on due process drew from his reading of British history; to him, due process meant all persons were to be tried in accordance with the Bill of Rights' procedural guarantees and in accordance with constitutionally pursuant laws.

Black advocated equal treatment by the government for all persons, regardless of wealth, age, or race. Black's view of due process was restrictive in the sense that it was premised on equal procedures ; it did not extend to substantive due process. This was in accordance with Black's literalist views. None of Black's colleagues shared his interpretation of the due process clause.

His chief rival on the issue and on many other issues was Felix Frankfurter , who advocated a substantive view of due process based on "natural law"—if a challenged action did not "shock the conscience" of the jurist, or violate British concepts of fairness, Frankfurter would find no violation of due process of law. John M. Harlan II largely agreed with Frankfurter, and was highly critical of Black's view, indicating his "continued bafflement at Black's insistence that due process No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live.

Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined. Our Constitution leaves no room for classification of people in a way that unnecessarily abridges this right. Black was one of the Supreme Court's foremost defenders of the " one man, one vote " principle. Sanders , holding that the Constitution required congressional districts in any state to be approximately equal in population.

He concluded that the Constitution's command "that Representatives be chosen 'by the People of the several States' means that as nearly as is practicable one man's vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another's". Sims , which extended the same requirement to state legislative districts on the basis of the equal protection clause.

At the same time, Black did not believe that the equal protection clause made poll taxes unconstitutional. During his first term on the court, he participated in a unanimous decision to uphold Georgia's poll tax in the case of Breedlove v. Virginia Board of Elections , invalidating the use of the poll tax as a qualification to vote, in which Breedlove was overturned.

He criticized the court for exceeding its "limited power to interpret the original meaning of the Equal Protection Clause" and for "giving that clause a new meaning which it believes represents a better governmental policy". Union Free School District No. By the late s, Black believed that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause was a constitutional prohibition against any state governmental actions that discriminated on the basis of race in an invidious or capricious manner.

Throughout the remainder of his time on the court, Black saw only race and the characteristics of alienage as the "suspect" categories that were addressed and protected by equal protection, along with the one-man, one-vote principle, all of which merited strict scrutiny. California [ 94 ] he wrote a concurring opinion. During his last full term on the court, he participated in a unanimous decision, Graham v.

Richardson , striking down statutes that restricted welfare benefits to legal aliens but not to U. The majority opinion stated, "[C]lassifications based on alienage, like those based on nationality or race, are inherently suspect and subject to close judicial scrutiny. Aliens as a class are a prime example of a 'discrete and insular minority' for whom such heightened judicial solicitude is appropriate.

Consistent with his view that the equal protection clause had a limited meaning, Black did not believe illegitimate children were a suspect class , and he applied only rational basis review to laws that were discriminatory toward such children. In , he joined a dissenting opinion written by Justice Harlan in the case of Levy v. Louisiana , in which a majority of the court overturned a decision made by the Louisiana courts to enforce a statute that was discriminatory toward "unacknowledged" illegitimate children.

But the power to make rules to establish, protect, and strengthen family life Absent a specific constitutional guarantee, it is for that legislature, not the life-tenured judges of this Court, to select from among possible laws. Black apparently did not think of homosexuals as a suspect class either, voting with five other colleagues on the court to uphold the authority of the federal government to deport a gay man just because he was gay, in Boutilier v.

Immigration and Naturalization Service. Services were held at the National Cathedral , and more than 1, people attended. Pursuant to Justice Black's wishes, the coffin was "simple and cheap" and was displayed at the service to show that the costs of burial are not reflective of the worth of the human whose remains were present. Powell was sworn in on January 7, Sprigle wrote that "Black and the leaders of the Klan decided it was good political strategy for Black to make the senatorial race unimpeded by Klan membership but backed by the power of the Klan.

That resignation [was] filed for the duration of the campaign but never revealed to the rank and file of the order and held secretly in the records of the Alabama Realm". Roosevelt denied knowledge of Black's KKK membership. In a radio statement on October 1, , [ ] Black said in part, "I number among my friends many members of the colored race.

Certainly, they are entitled to the full measure of protection accorded by our Constitution and our laws I later resigned. I never rejoined. Before becoming a Senator I dropped the Klan. I have never resumed it and never expect to do so. Near the end of his life, Black said that joining the Klan was a mistake: "I would have joined any group if it helped get me votes.

Biographers in the s examined Black's views of religious denominations. Ball found regarding the Klan that Black "sympathized with the group's economic, nativist, and anti-Catholic beliefs". Mills Thornton emphasizes his close ties to the KKK. Black was one of the nine justices of the Supreme Court who in ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.

The plaintiffs were represented by Thurgood Marshall. A decade later, on October 2, , Marshall became the first African American to be appointed to the Supreme Court, and served with Black on the court until Black's retirement on September 17, In United States v. Price , eighteen Ku Klux Klan members were charged with murder and conspiracy for the deaths of James Chaney , Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner , but the charges were dismissed by the trial court.

A unanimous Supreme Court, which included Black, reversed the dismissal and ordered the case to proceed to trial. Rainey , were found not guilty; and three of them, including Edgar Ray Killen , had their cases end in a hung jury. Hugo Black was twice the subject of covers of Time magazine: On August 26, , as a United States senator; [ ] and on October 9, , as an associate justice art by Robert Vickrey.

Justice hugo black biography report

Along with Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Brennan Jr. In , Congress passed a law sponsored by Alabama representative Ben Erdreich , designating the new courthouse building for the U. Black United States Courthouse". An extensive collection of Black's personal, senatorial, and judicial papers is archived at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress , where it is open for research.

A special Hugo Black collection is maintained by the library. Black served on the Supreme Court for thirty-four years, making him the fifth longest-serving Justice in Supreme Court history. He was the senior longest serving justice on the court for an unprecedented twenty-five years, from the death of Chief Justice Stone on April 22, , to his own retirement on September 17, As the longest-serving associate justice, he was acting chief justice on two occasions: from Stone's death until Vinson took office on June 24, ; and from Vinson's death on September 8, , until Warren took office on October 5, There was no interregnum between the Warren and Burger courts in Contents move to sidebar hide.

Board of Education. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. US Supreme Court justice from to Josephine Foster. Elizabeth DeMeritte. Early years [ edit ]. Senate career [ edit ]. Appointment to the Supreme Court [ edit ]. Supreme Court career [ edit ].

Relationship with other justices [ edit ]. Jurisprudence [ edit ]. Judicial restraint [ edit ]. Textualism and originalism [ edit ]. Flexibility with textualism and originalism [ edit ]. Supreme Court opinions delivered to your inbox! Selected Opinions by Justice Black: Afroyim v. Pointer v. Stiffel Co. Wesberry v. Gideon v. Engel v.

Vitale Topic: Religion State officials may not compose an official state prayer and require that it be recited in public schools, even if the prayer is denominationally neutral, and even if students may remain silent or be excused. Torcaso v. Watkins Topic: Religion A religious test for public office unconstitutionally invaded freedom of belief and religion.

Beacon Theatres, Inc. Klor's, Inc. Broadway-Hale Stores, Inc. Cooper v. Aaron Topic: Role of Courts ; Equal Protection State officials have a duty to obey federal court orders resting on the Supreme Court's considered interpretation of the Constitution. Conley v. Reid v. Covert Topic: Role of Courts Courts of law alone are given power to try civilians for their offenses against the United States.

Arrowsmith v. Commissioner Topic: Taxes When a later transaction is sufficiently related to an earlier transaction, the later transaction will be treated as having the same character as the earlier transaction for tax purposes. Lewis Topic: Taxes When a taxpayer reported an amount received as an employee bonus, and he claimed it in good faith and used it unconditionally as his own, but he was required to return half of the amount to his employer after it was decided that the bonus had been computed improperly, the claim of right doctrine meant that the entire amount was income in the year when it was received, and the taxpayer was not entitled to recompute his tax for that year.

Williams v. McCollum v. Board of Education Topic: Religion The utilization of a state's tax supported public school system and its machinery for compulsory public school attendance to enable sectarian groups to give religious instruction to public school pupils in public school buildings violated the First Amendment. Everson v. Board of Education Topic: Religion The First Amendment does not prohibit a state from spending tax-raised funds to pay the bus fares of parochial school pupils as a part of a general program under which it pays the fares of pupils attending public and other schools.

Marsh v. Korematsu v. Black strongly believed that the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution—which provides that "[n]o State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States"—means that the first eight amendments of the bill of rights must be applied to the states as well as to the federal government.

Eventually, a majority of the Court agreed with him. In gideon v. In Pointer v. Texas , U. Black always carried a copy of the Constitution in his pocket. He was a staunch defender of the first amendment and vehemently opposed any restrictions on the freedom of speech. He dissented in dennis v. Black rejected the Court's reliance on the "clear-and-present-danger" test, in which the Court considered whether such a serious danger existed that the.

Black wrote, "There is hope … that in calmer times, when present pressures, passions and fears subside, this or some other Court will restore the First Amendment liberties to the high preferred place where they belong in society. Douglas's dissent in the obscenity case roth v. In the First Amendment case engel v. He stated,. Black departed from his liberal views in korematsu v.

Despite the condemnation of Korematsu in the years following the war, Black stood by the decision, maintaining that it was justified by the climate of fear that existed at the time. In addition, his strict construction of the Constitution led him to write other opinions that sometimes seem inconsistent with his liberal views. He dissented in griswold v.

Black maintained that no right of privacy could be found to emanate "from one or more constitutional provisions. While on the Court, Black was known for being sometimes antagonistic toward other justices with whom he disagreed. The Court's tradition of keeping private its inner workings and the nature of the personal relationships between the justices was broken when Black became engaged in an unusually public feud with Justice robert h.

The dispute began when Jackson, in a letter to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, accused Black of a conflict of interest for participating in two labor decisions that were argued by a former law partner of Black's. Jackson failed to mention that Black and the attorney had dissolved their partnership nineteen years earlier and had hardly seen each other since.

Black, in turn, publicly criticized Jackson's leave of absence from the Court from to to serve as the U. Following Vinson's appointment, Black and Jackson were outwardly cordial to each other, though Jackson was reported to have remained resentful, believing that Black's actions had denied him the post of chief justice. Healthy and vigorous well into his later life, Black was an avid tennis player who often shared the court with his law clerks.

On September 17, , Black resigned from the Court at the age of eighty-five. He died just eight days later after suffering a massive stroke. Frank, John P. Hockett, Jeffrey D. Black, Felix Frankfurter , and Robert H. Lanham, Md. Newman, Roger K. Hugo Black: A Biography. New York : Fordham Univ. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

January 9, Retrieved January 09, from Encyclopedia. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia. Roosevelt's first appointee to the U. Supreme Court.

Associate Justice Black was an ardent New Dealer and led the liberal and activist wing of the Court for more than 32 years. The youngest in a family of eight, Hugo Black was born on a farm in the rural area of Clay County, Ala. The family, well off by rural standards, moved to Ashland, the county seat, so that the children would have better educational opportunities.

Hugo attended Ashland College. Interested in law, at the age of 18 he enrolled in the University of Alabama Law School at Tuscaloosa. After 2 years he received his law degree and passed the bar examinations. Clifford and Virginia Durr At the same time, Black led state efforts in and outside of the courtroom to end convict leasing , the state practice of leasing prisoners as workers to private industries, especially Birmingham's coal mines.

Condemned as a modern form of deadly slavery for a majority of Alabama's black prisoners, convict leasing had become a primary source of revenue for the Alabama state government in the nineteenth century. It also figured in the one and only case in which Black appeared as a lawyer before the U. Supreme Court. On February 23, , Black married Josephine Foster, daughter of a prominent family and sister of future civil rights activist Virginia Foster Durr.

The couple would have three children, Hugo Black Jr. Hugo L. Almost 50 years later, in an interview published by agreement only after his death, Black stated that he joined the Klan because he considered it an "anti-corporation" force that helped to counter the political and social influence of industrialists and large corporations who had taken full control of the Alabama economy after the destruction of the state's labor movement.

In , after incumbent U. Underwood indicated that he would not seek re-election, Black resigned from the Klan and announced his candidacy for the U. Black won the Democratic nomination, which assured him of victory in the general election in , after a campaign supporting prohibition, fighting "millionaire opponents," and condemning the influence of money in politics.

In an all-white election, an enlarged Klan vote across Alabama apparently split between Black and another Senate candidate, Breck Musgrove, but Black carried almost all Alabama counties where Baptists constituted a majority of white churchgoers. During his first term in the Senate, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency, Black had relatively little influence on the course of national legislation or public events, although he often spoke against "monied interests" and corrupt use of government for private corporate gain.

Black won a second term in , the same year that Democrats gained a majority in Congress and took control of the White House with the election of Franklin D. Hugo Black at Lincoln Memorial, Even before Roosevelt was inaugurated, Black introduced legislation to establish a minimum wage and to limit work in most large industries to 30 hours a week in order to spread available jobs to millions of workers who lost their jobs in the Great Depression.

Six years later, Black's substantially revised legislation became the Fair Labor Standards Act, America's first minimum-wage law. Black's Senate committee investigations prompted the reorganization of the nation's airline and utility industries. While most southern members of Congress selectively supported New Deal proposals, Black usually voted for Roosevelt's policies and often complained that the administration did not go far enough to help the lower classes.

In August , Roosevelt appointed Black to the U. Supreme Court, and he was confirmed by the Senate on August Despite a national uproar, led by anti-New Deal newspapers, Black refused to resign. In a national radio address, the first ever delivered by a member of the Supreme Court, Black explained that he abhorred racial and religious intolerance while acknowledging that he once belonged to the Klan.

Over more than three decades, Justice Black helped move the Supreme Court away from legal doctrine that had jeopardized New Deal reforms and wrote dozens of opinions. Many were dissents that later became law and included expanding the rights of free speech to those whom society considered unpopular, weak, poor, zealous, or hated.

In , Black wrote a dissent in Adamson v. California in which he contended that the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment endowed the American people with all the entitlements of the federal Bill of Rights that no local, state, or federal government official could lawfully ignore. Also that year, Black wrote a majority opinion proclaiming a constitutional mandate for a "wall of separation between church and state" in Everson v.

Board of Education. Over the following two decades, Black's judicial views about the application of the Bill of Rights and the separation of church and state were largely adopted by the Court. Supreme Court Justices, In , Black joined in the Supreme Court's unanimous opinion outlawing racial segregation in public education in Brown v.