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William J. Brennan, Jr.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| William Joseph Brennan, Jr. | |
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| In office October 16, 1956 – July 20, 1990 |
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| Nominated by | Dwight Eisenhower |
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| Preceded by | Sherman Minton |
| Succeeded by | David Souter |
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| Born | April 25, 1906 Newark, New Jersey |
| Died | July 24, 1997 (aged 91) Washington, D.C., U.S. |
William Joseph Brennan, Jr. (April 25, 1906 – July 24, 1997) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Known for his outspoken liberal views, including opposition to the death penalty and support for abortion rights, he was considered to be among the Court's most influential members.
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Brennan was the second of eight children. His parents, William and Agnes (McDermott) Brennan, were Irish immigrants. They met in the United States, although both were originally from County Roscommon in Ireland. His father had little education; he worked as a metal polisher. However, he rose to a position of leadership, serving as the Commissioner of Public Safety for the city of Newark from 1917 to 1930.
Brennan attended public schools in Newark, New Jersey, graduating from Barringer High School. He then attended Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with a degree in Economics in 1928. While at the University, he was a member of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity.
When he was 21, Brennan married Marjorie Leonard, whom he had met in high school. They eventually had three children: William, Nancy and Hugh. Brennan attended Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau [1]. He graduated in 1931 and entered private practice in his home state of New Jersey, where he practiced labor law. He entered the Army as a Major in March 1942, and left as a Colonel in 1945. He did legal work for the ordinance division. In 1949, Brennan was appointed to the Superior Court (a Trial court) by Governor of New Jersey Alfred E. Driscoll. In 1951, Driscoll appointed him to the New Jersey Supreme Court.
Brennan was named to the U.S. Supreme Court through a recess appointment by Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, shortly before the 1956 presidential election. Presidential advisers thought the appointment of a Catholic Democrat from the Northeast would woo critical voters in the upcoming election for Eisenhower, a Republican. He was confirmed by the United States Senate with only Senator Joseph McCarthy dissenting. He filled the seat vacated by Justice Sherman Minton. He held the post until his retirement on July 20, 1990 for health reasons; he was succeeded on the Court by Justice David Souter. Brennan then taught at Georgetown University Law Center until 1994. With 1,360 opinions, he is second only to William O. Douglas in number of opinions written while a Supreme Court justice.
An outspoken liberal throughout his career, he played a leading role in the Warren Court's dramatic expansion of individual rights. Brennan played a large behind-the-scenes role during the Warren Court, coaxing more conservative colleagues to join the Court's decisions. Brennan's opinions with respect to voting (Baker v. Carr), criminal proceedings (Malloy v. Hogan), the free speech and establishment clauses of the First Amendment (Roth v. United States), and civil rights (Green v. School Board of New Kent County) were some of the most important opinions of the Warren Era. Brennan's role in expanding speech rights under the First Amendment is particularly notable, as he wrote the opinion of the court in 1964's New York Times v. Sullivan, which created constitutional restrictions on the law of libel. It was Brennan who coined the phrase "chilling effect", in 1965's Dombrowski v. Pfister. His close friendship with Chief Justice Warren, who frequently assigned Brennan the task of writing the majority opinion, led to the other justices nicknaming him the "deputy Chief".
On the more moderate Burger Court, Brennan was a staunch opponent of the death penalty, and a supporter of abortion rights, and joined the majority in landmark rulings on both issues (1972's Furman v. Georgia on the death penalty and 1973's Roe v. Wade on abortion). With the accession of the most conservative member of the court, William Rehnquist, to the position of Chief Justice, and the replacement of moderates Warren Burger and Lewis Powell with conservatives Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, Brennan found himself more frequently isolated. At times his opinions would be joined only by Thurgood Marshall, as by 1975 the two were the last remaining liberal justices of the Warren Court (Byron White was the third survivor of the Warren Court during Rehnquist's tenure, but he generally sided with the conservatives). This likemindedness led to both Brennan and Marshall's clerks referring to them as 'Justice Brennan-Marshall' in the face of the court's heavy conservative opposition to the two. Brennan declared in Furman that he believed the death penalty violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on "cruel and unusual" punishment, and for his remaining years on the bench he and Marshall dissented from every case upholding the imposition of the death penalty. He was able to convince no other justice of this view, though Justice Harry Blackmun would eventually agree in 1994--after Brennan's retirement.
In his penultimate and final terms on the Court, he wrote the controversial rulings for Texas v. Johnson and United States v. Eichman, respectively. In both cases, the Court held that the First Amendment protects flag desecration.
Brennan's wife Marjorie died in 1982. A few months later, in 1983, he married Mary Fowler, who had served as his secretary for 26 years. He was 77 years old. Brennan's colleagues learned of his second marriage via a short office memo stating, "Mary Fowler and I were married yesterday and we have gone to Bermuda."
Brennan's conservative detractors, while acknowledging his legal acumen, thought him the embodiment of the worst features of judicial activism. Brennan's general strategy on cases was to acknowledge the validity of the governmental interest justifying the given law, but to find the law in question not narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. Thus, Brennan generally shied away from the absolutist positions of Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, though he agreed with many of the results they would reach in cases involving individual rights.
In the 1980s, as the Reagan Admistration and the Rehnquist Court threatened to "roll back" the decisions of the Warren Court, Brennan became more vocal about his jurisprudential views. In a 1985 speech at Georgetown University, Brennan criticized Attorney General Edwin Meese's call for a "jurisprudence of original intention" as "arrogance cloaked as humility" and advocated reading the U.S. Constitution to protect rights of "human dignity."
Brennan was also less interested in stare decisis or the avoidance of "absolutist" positions where the death penalty was concerned. Brennan and Thurgood Marshall concluded in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty was, in all circumstances, unconstitutional, and never accepted the legitimacy of Gregg v. Georgia, which ruled that the death penalty was constitutional four years later. Thereafter, Brennan or Marshall took turns, joined by the other, in mechanically issuing a dissent in every denial of certiorari in a capital case, and from every decision in a case which the court did take which failed to vacate a sentence of death. (See Woodward, The Brethren; Lazarus, Closed Chambers.)
Brennan was also authored a dissenting opinion in Glass v. Louisiana. In Glass, the conservative majority of court held that the use of the electric chair as a form of execution did not violate the Constitution.
In dissent, Brennan wrote[2]:
"Th[e] evidence suggests that death by electrical current is extremely violent and inflicts pain and indignities far beyond the 'mere extinguishment of life.' Witnesses routinely report that, when the switch is thrown, the condemned prisoner 'cringes,' 'leaps,' and 'fights the straps with amazing strength.' 'The hands turn red, then white, and the cords of the neck stand out like steel bands.' The prisoner's limbs, fingers, toes, and face are severely contorted. The force of the electrical current is so powerful that the prisoner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and 'rest on [his] cheeks.' The prisoner often defecates, urinates, and vomits blood and drool."
Brennan concluded that electrocution is "nothing less than the contemporary technological equivalent of burning people at the stake.
The D.C.-based indie rock band Fugazi wrote the song "Dear Justice Letter" in tribute to Brennan after his retirement from the court, presumably as the band shares many of his social and political beliefs.
The building in Jersey City, New Jersey, where Brennan served as an Assignment Judge is named the William J. Brennan Jr. Courthouse.[3]
- "[W]e consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials." In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 1964.
- "I cannot accept the notion that lawyers are one of the punishments a person receives merely for being accused of a crime." Jones v. Barnes, 463 U.S. 745 (1983) (dissenting).
| Preceded by Sherman Minton |
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States October 16, 1956 – July 20, 1990 |
Succeeded by David Souter |
Categories: Articles needing additional references from October 2007 | 1905 births | 1997 deaths | American legal academics | American military personnel of World War II | Burials at Arlington National Cemetery | Georgetown University faculty | Harvard Law School alumni | Irish-Americans | New Jersey state court judges | New Jersey Supreme Court justices | New Jersey lawyers | People from Newark, New Jersey | Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients | United States Army officers | United States Supreme Court justices | Wharton School alumni