Today in Supreme Court History: July 2, 1908

7/2/1908: Justice Thurgood Marshall's birthday.

Justice Thurgood Marshall

Comments

[Queen Amalthea]

Looks like Marshall would likely be canceled by the anti-CRT laws:

"'Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight and sense of justice exhibited by the Framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today.''

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/07/us/marshall-sounds-critical-note-on-bicentennial.html

[bernard11]

Good catch.

[TTT]

You mean like the left is trying to do with Jefferson and Marshell. Neither side holds the moral high ground when it comes to cancel culture.

[Krychek_2]

You do realize that owning slaves, and pointing out that slavery was a bad thing, are not morally equivalent?

[TTT]

Now I understand. Your side only does it for noble reasons while the other side is evil. Sorry, but neither side has the high ground.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Actually, we do have the high ground. We didn't own slaves. Is there a equivalent?

[TTT]

The right wants to fire teachers who teach CRT. The left want to fire professors who read supreme court opinions. I don't see the difference.

[Queen Amalthea]

Many here regularly condemn all racial preferences in very strong terms (some saying it's equatable to Jim Crow or the KKK). Thurgood Marshall was obviously the beneficiary of racial preference.* Marshall was, in a country that was for most of its history around one to two in ten black, the first African-American as well as the 96th Justice overall. If you put ten slips of paper into a hat and drew them at random 96 times and one of the slips was only chosen once that would make anyone notice the game was very likely rigged. Johnson saw that, he knew that that feeling of a rigged game was poisonous, one to two in ten of our citizens had to feel the game was rigged against them. And so he appointed Marshall, and suddenly those one to two in ten could now see themselves represented on the Court, they knew it was possible in this nation for someone who looked like them to be in one of the highest positions in the land. Marshall became a role model to very many black persons and a point of pride in a people who had been (often violently) humiliated regularly for most of our nation's history.

Whatever his faults or pluses as a Justice I've not heard that his jurisprudence was significantly worse or better than his peers. It's hard to argue he didn't bring a very different background and set of experiences to the court, a set that would reflect, again, the rather unique and general experience of black Americans at the time. His appointment, which again surely involved preference as a factor, is one of the more powerful arguments in favor of some use of preferences. I think opponents of preference who want to go past knee jerk tribalism need to wrestle with this kind of example.

*On paper there were likely better candidates in some traditional metrics (he went to Lincoln and then Howard, not Yale then Harvard), through his track record in the field was of course very impressive

[Libertymike]

Many of the preference critics at whom you are presumably directing your post are white MLK content of character formalists. The dissident right derisively refers to them as "civnats" who play by the rules of the progressive playbook and who accept the larger premises of the progressive narrative.

Preferences are part of life; they are an immutable feature of the human condition. Some people have a hard time accepting this reality.

The late, great Walter Williams did not have such difficulty. He often boasted to his students that when it came time for him to choose a wife, he discriminated against two types of women: white women and fat women.

[Queen Amalthea]

That preferences are a part of life in some areas hardly means they are justified in others. Especially since preferences are to some extent 'socially constructed.'

[Dan Schiavetta]

Marshall wasn't a brilliant legal mind but he was a brave man and a hero.

Odd that we don't worry ourselves about legal brilliance when discussing white Justices. Marshall joined a Court that did not have any geniuses on it, except Douglas, whose mind was by then rarely engaged, and I suppose Harlan.

It should be noted that in order to get a black man onto the Court LBJ had to bring on Ramsay Clark as Attorney General, knowing that this would cause Clark's father Tom C. Clark to "permanently recuse" himself (i.e., retire.).

[Sarcastr0]

Maybe he wasn't brilliant in his later days on the court, but his litigation strategies were genius.

[Syd Henderson]

He was brilliant as a lawyer for the NAACP. It was the best part of his career.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

I still remember his press conference when he announced his retirement from the court. Someone asked him which of his many jobs had been his favorite. He answered being Solicitor General under President Johnson. I thought that was an interesting answer.

[Dan Schiavetta]

It was a true answer. I remember that press conference well. It was thirteen years into Reagan/GHWBush incompetence/laziness/race baiting and it was a sad lookback into times when government was doing good and brave things that took a lot of hard work and convincing.

[LawTalkingGuy]

The word “brilliant” is used way too much to describe justices and appellate judges generally.

[Dan Schiavetta]

That is true. Too often, one is called "brilliant" when it's just a courtesy, for example, a law professor.

A few years ago Bill Mazur on radio was quizzing a liberal guest as to Scalia. He said, "Why do you call him 'brilliant'? He said things you say were false!" There was no answer. Scalia, for some reason, is always called "brilliant".

Let me say on the record that my Con Law professor was not "brilliant". Yes, he mostly said things I agreed with, but he was 1) a Con Law Professor, 2) white, male, Jewish, 3) a liberal lion of the law school. In fact he was rather dim.

[David Nieporent]

This. He wasn't really a very good justice, and he stayed too long — but his decades-long strategy of challenging segregation with the NAACP was brilliant (and of course successful).

[Bob from Ohio]

"Odd that we don’t worry ourselves about legal brilliance when discussing white Justices."

That is not true at all.

Everybody nitpicks a white nominee's record looking for signs of brilliance.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Thurgood Marshall was obviously the beneficiary of racial preference."

I thought he was a brilliant and accomplished trial lawyer, former Circuit Court judge and serving US Solicitor General who was as qualified as anyone else in the country to sit on the court.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Odd how you haven't extended such compliments to actual living African Americans who have achieved high places.

[Libertymike]

As written, agreed.

As applied, we might prefer we had different preferences.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Justice Marshall was an American hero.

Modern right-wingers will never forgive him for what he did. Better Americans will replace the Taney bust with one of Marshall at the Capitol. Thank goodness for American progress.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Better Americans should consider Taney's entire life and career, and not just a single decision. Not that I care all that much who's bust is on display at the Capitol.