Thurgood Marshall

Thoroughgood "Thurgood" Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-American justice. Before his judicial service, he was an attorney who fought for civil rights, leading the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Marshall was a prominent figure in the movement to end racial segregation in American public schools. He won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Supreme Court, culminating in the Court's landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which rejected the separate but equal doctrine and held segregation in public education to be unconstitutional. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court in 1967. A staunch liberal, he frequently dissented as the Court became increasingly conservative.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Marshall attended Lincoln University and the Howard University School of Law. At Howard, he was mentored by Charles Hamilton Houston, who taught his students to be "social engineers" willing to use the law to fight for civil rights. Marshall opened a law practice in Baltimore but soon joined Houston at the NAACP in New York. They worked together on the segregation case of Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada; after Houston returned to Washington, Marshall took his place as special counsel of the NAACP, and he became director-counsel of the newly formed NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He participated in numerous landmark Supreme Court cases involving civil rights, including Smith v. Allwright, Morgan v. Virginia, Shelley v. Kraemer, McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, Sweatt v. Painter, Brown, and Cooper v. Aaron. His approach to desegregation cases emphasized the use of sociological data to show that segregation was inherently unequal.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where he favored a broad interpretation of constitutional protections. Four years later, Johnson appointed him as the U.S. Solicitor General. In 1967, Johnson nominated Marshall to replace Justice Tom C. Clark on the Supreme Court; despite opposition from Southern senators, he was confirmed by a 69–11 vote. He was often in the majority during the consistently liberal Warren Court period, but after appointments by President Richard Nixon made the Court more conservative, Marshall frequently found himself in dissent. His closest ally on the Court was Justice William J. Brennan Jr., and the two voted the same way in most cases.

Marshall's jurisprudence was pragmatic and drew on his real-world experience. His most influential contribution to constitutional doctrine, the "sliding-scale" approach to the Equal Protection Clause, called on courts to apply a flexible balancing test instead of a more rigid tier-based analysis. He fervently opposed the death penalty, which in his view constituted cruel and unusual punishment; he and Brennan dissented in more than 1,400 cases in which the majority refused to review a death sentence. He favored a robust interpretation of the First Amendment in decisions such as Stanley v. Georgia, and he supported abortion rights in Roe v. Wade and other cases. Marshall retired from the Supreme Court in 1991 and was replaced by Clarence Thomas. He died in 1993.

Early life and education

Thurgood He also had a high regard for Warren, whom he described as "probably the greatest Chief Justice who ever lived". According to the scholar William J. Daniels: "His approach to justice was Warren Court–style legal realism... In his dissenting opinions he emphasized individual rights, fundamental fairness, equal opportunity and protection under the law, the supremacy of the Constitution as the embodiment of rights and privileges, and the Supreme Court's responsibility to play a significant role in giving meaning to the notion of constitutional rights." in a 1987 speech commemorating the Constitution's bicentennial, he said:

Equal protection and civil rights

alt=Black-and-white photograph of the nine justices of the Supreme Court in their judicial robes|thumb|upright=1.35|Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1976. Marshall is in the bottom row, first from the right.

As the Court became increasingly conservative, Marshall found himself dissenting in numerous cases regarding racial discrimination.

Criminal procedure and capital punishment

Marshall supported the Warren Court's constitutional decisions on criminal law, and he wrote the opinion of the Court in Benton v. Maryland, which held that the Constitution's prohibition of double jeopardy applied to the states. in United States v. Ross, for instance, he indignantly dissented when the Court upheld a conviction that was based on evidence discovered during a warrantless search of containers that had been found in an automobile.

Privacy

In Marshall's view, the Constitution guaranteed to all citizens the right to privacy; he felt that although the Constitution nowhere mentioned such a right expressly, it could be inferred from various provisions of the Bill of Rights.

Retirement, later life, and death

alt=Gravestone reading "Thurgood Marshall / Associate Justice / 1967–1991 / United States Supreme Court / July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993|thumb|Marshall's gravestone at [[Arlington National Cemetery]]

Marshall did not wish to retire—he frequently said "I was appointed to a life term, and I intend to serve it"—but he had been in ill health for many years, and Brennan's retirement in 1990 left him unhappy and isolated on the Court. The 82-year-old justice announced on June 27, 1991, that he would retire.

Marshall served as a visiting judge on the Second Circuit for a week in January 1992, and he received the American Bar Association's highest award in August of that year. Marshall was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. For Tushnet, he was "probably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century"; A 1999 survey of black political scientists listed Marshall as one of the ten greatest African-American leaders in history; panelists described him as the "greatest jurist of the twentieth century" and stated that he "spearheaded the creation of the legal foundations of the civil rights movement". Scholars of the Supreme Court have not rated Marshall as highly as some of his colleagues: although his pre–Supreme Court legal career and his staunch liberalism have met with broad approval, a perception that he lacked substantial influence over his fellow justices has harmed his reputation. In Abraham's view, "he was one of America's greatest public lawyers, but he was not a great Supreme Court justice". The state of Maryland renamed Baltimore's airport the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport in 2005, and the University of Maryland's law library is named in his honor. Buildings named for Marshall include New York's 590-foot-high Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse (renamed in 2001), where he heard cases as an appellate judge, and the federal judicial center in Washington. He is the namesake of streets and schools throughout the nation, including notably Thurgood Marshall College at the University of California, San Diego. and the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in his honor in 2003. He was depicted by Sidney Poitier in the 1991 television movie Separate but Equal, by Laurence Fishburne in George Stevens Jr.'s Broadway play Thurgood, and by Chadwick Boseman in the 2017 film Marshall. May 17 was selected as the Feast of Thurgood Marshall to mark the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. His feast day was included among the Lesser Feasts and Fasts on a trial basis in 2009, and he was made a permanent saint of the church in 2018.

Notes

References

External links

Oral History Interview with Thurgood Marshall, from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library
FBI file on Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall

Early life and education

Equal protection and civil rights

Criminal procedure and capital punishment

Privacy

Other topics

Retirement, later life, and death

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

Historiography and memory

Primary sources

External links