John Roberts Is on a Collision Course With Trump
by Jeff Shesol
February 23, 2025
New York Times
by Jeff Shesol
February 23, 2025
New York Times
Photo Illustration by The New York Times
Source Photographs: Cscredon/Getty Images
Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
Source Photographs: Cscredon/Getty Images
Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
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[Mr. Shesol is the author of “Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court” and other books.]
Alexander Hamilton saw it coming. In the Federalist Papers, he described the judiciary as a feeble branch of government, easily “overpowered, awed or influenced” by Congress and the president. Lacking the means to enforce their rulings, judges, he wrote, would need an “uncommon portion of fortitude.”
If any judge feels that necessity now, it is Chief Justice John Roberts. The legal challenges to President Trump’s constitutional crime spree are multiplying. One case, concerning the president’s purge of government watchdogs, has already reached the Supreme Court. The justices could soon take up another, weighing whether the president can end birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants. As Chief Justice Roberts no doubt knows, these battles pose one of the most profound tests his institution has ever faced — a test of its authority and the idea of equal justice under the law. The chief will have to find his fortitude.
For now, he appears to be steeling himself. His most recent report on the federal judiciary — issued a few weeks before Mr. Trump’s inauguration — opens with a parable about King George III, who tried to bring colonial judges to heel, and brims with concern about “violence, intimidation and defiance directed at judges.” This has been interpreted, in part, as a swipe at Vice President JD Vance, who has been peddling the idea that judges have no business telling a president how to “control his own government.”
If the chief justice intended a shot across the bow, Mr. Vance remains undeterred. He and other Republicans — egged on by Elon Musk and right-wing legal theorists — continue to talk, gleefully, about defying the court. This includes the president. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Mr. Trump recently posted on social media, a nod to Napoleon, if not other dictators. A day later, he reposted the quote, proudly attaching it to a headline stating that his administration was refusing to obey a district court order unfreezing billions of dollars in federal grants.
It is possible that these threats are theater, meant to cow the justices into compliance. But it is more likely that they are not. Mr. Trump is clearly well aware that the court is unpopular and no longer commands the reverence that long protected it from attacks. According to a Marquette Law School poll, a majority of Americans believe that politics, not law, drives most Supreme Court decisions. The regal lifestyle of Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — bankrolled by wealthy benefactors and only disclosed under duress — has also eroded the esteem the court once enjoyed. There was little outcry when Mr. Trump maligned the court in the past, when he called justices “incompetent” and “dumb,” when he accused the court of sending “shotgun blasts into the face” of Republicans. He has felt free — perhaps never freer than now — to show contempt for judges, juries, lawyers, the rule of law and the Constitution. The question is not whether Mr. Trump will defy the court, but how soon and to what extent.
A clash is coming, despite the court’s sympathy for some aspects of the Trump agenda. In recent years, with gathering force, Chief Justice Roberts and his conservative supermajority have been crippling federal agencies, dismantling environmental regulations, weakening voter protections, stripping away reproductive rights and undercutting racial diversity — advance work, all of it, for Project 2025. The assault on the “deep state” echoes the chief justice’s own disdain for government “functionaries” and his indulgent view of executive power. In a 2020 opinion, he expanded the president’s power to fire civil servants without cause. That decision, as Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent, “wipes out” the independence of the agency in question, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And now Mr. Trump, following this lead, has sought to wipe out the agency itself. He has effectively shut the C.F.P.B. down, locking out its staff members and preparing to return its funding to the Federal Reserve. When you put a man above the law, as the court did in last year’s presidential immunity case, he’s going to act like he’s above the law.
At some point, presumably, the justices will draw the line. They may allow Mr. Trump to purge parts of the federal government, but it is hard to imagine them endorsing his attempt to revoke birthright citizenship. His executive order, issued on his first day in office, is dressed up in legal language but directly contravenes the 14th Amendment, as more than one judge has pointed out. The court also seems unlikely to countenance Mr. Trump’s freeze of funds that Congress appropriated. A long line of cases, including a recent 7-2 opinion by Justice Thomas, affirms “the principle of legislative supremacy over fiscal matters.” As the administration continues, by increasingly artful means, to undermine court orders that it restart spending, the fundamental issue becomes starker and clearer. “If presidents can impound appropriated funds at any time and for any reason,” Georgetown Law’s Stephen Vladeck observes, “then there’s not much point to having a legislature.”
In any consequential ruling, Chief Justice Roberts will likely be tempted to narrow his reasoning, soften his tone and, if possible, leave Mr. Trump out of it. Such was the case in Trump v. Anderson, which tiptoed awkwardly around the central question of whether Mr. Trump had engaged in insurrection and should therefore be barred from federal office. The chief justice’s instinct for self-preservation is strong, as is his faith in sleights of hand. But that faith would be disastrous here. A vague, performatively nuanced opinion will almost certainly be perceived by the White House as weakness — and a green light to further lawlessness.
On Aug. 22, 1973, the day that a Federal District Court judge heard arguments in the Watergate tapes case, President Richard Nixon refused to say whether he would comply with anything less than a “definitive order” by the Supreme Court. Nearly a year later, an 8-0 court ruled against him. (Justice William Rehnquist, who had served in the Nixon administration, recused himself.) For Chief Justice Roberts, unanimity will be hard — even impossible — to achieve in most cases concerning Mr. Trump’s actions as president. During Mr. Trump’s first term, when the court ruled that he had improperly revoked the immigration program known as DACA, the justices split 5-4; in a dissent, Justice Thomas accused the chief justice of writing an opinion with “no basis in law.” But even a divided decision can be definitive by the force of its logic, the directness of its language, the unambiguity of its intent. Nothing less will suffice.
Of course, Mr. Trump might defy the court anyway — a historical breach with consequences that can scarcely be imagined. It could be the spark that sets off a revolt against the courts: copycat noncompliance by Republican governors and attorneys general. If any of this comes to pass, the chief justice will have no real recourse. The cudgelsthat lower courts use to sanction and disbar lawyers or fine officials and agencies are of little use against a rogue commander in chief. The court could threaten to hold the president in contempt. But that threat would be hollow: Without the support of federal marshals, who answer to Mr. Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, the court cannot enforce its order. And Congress, for its part, will almost certainly line up behind Mr. Trump — as it has in nearly all matters, even when its own powers are being usurped. The court will stand alone, abandoned; and Chief Justice Roberts, it is safe to assume, will not escalate a conflict his institution has already lost.
He will, however, have one last tool in his arsenal: his voice. He might be reluctant to use it. In his year-end report, he observed that the judiciary is “ill-suited” to defend its own integrity, because “judges typically speak only through their decisions. We do not call press conferences or generally issue rebuttals.” But there is nothing typical about a constitutional crisis. Charles Evans Hughes, one of John Roberts’s most esteemed predecessors, might provide a model. In 1937, when Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed to expand the Supreme Court by adding up to six justices, Chief Justice Hughes drafted a letter refuting Roosevelt’s false claims about the court and permitted it to be read aloud in the Senate chamber. Critics called it a breach of judicial protocol, but Hughes took pride in dealing the court-packing plan a blow. “This letter,” he observed later, “appears to have had a devastating effect.”
That is too much to hope for here. No letter is going to deter Mr. Trump. Still, Chief Justice Roberts should say his piece. If Mr. Trump flouts a court ruling, the nation will need its chief justice to explain what is happening — and why the executive branch, for all its prerogatives, must be bound by the Constitution. The nation will need him to summon the bravery displayed by Danielle Sassoon — the interim U.S. attorney who quit last week rather than implement a corrupt order from the Justice Department — and by Hagan Scotten, the assistant U.S. attorney (and former Roberts clerk) who did the same. In a letter to the attorney general, Ms. Sassoon called the department’s directive “breathtaking and dangerous.” At a time of fear and acquiescence, her example has inspired many. Let us hope the chief justice is among them. His responsibility is greater; his courage must be, too.
More on John Roberts and the Supreme Court:
Opinion | Jeff Shesol
The Tragedy of John Roberts
July 3, 2023
Opinion | Ross Douthat
John Roberts, Conservative Statesman
July 1, 2023
How Roberts Shaped Trump’s Supreme Court Winning Streak
Sept. 15, 2024
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jeff Shesol is the author of several books, including “Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court” and “Mercury Rising: John Glenn, John Kennedy and the New Battleground of the Cold War.”
https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/civil-rights-leaders/charles-hamilton-houston
NAACP History: Charles Hamilton Houston (1895-1950)
Alexander Hamilton saw it coming. In the Federalist Papers, he described the judiciary as a feeble branch of government, easily “overpowered, awed or influenced” by Congress and the president. Lacking the means to enforce their rulings, judges, he wrote, would need an “uncommon portion of fortitude.”
If any judge feels that necessity now, it is Chief Justice John Roberts. The legal challenges to President Trump’s constitutional crime spree are multiplying. One case, concerning the president’s purge of government watchdogs, has already reached the Supreme Court. The justices could soon take up another, weighing whether the president can end birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants. As Chief Justice Roberts no doubt knows, these battles pose one of the most profound tests his institution has ever faced — a test of its authority and the idea of equal justice under the law. The chief will have to find his fortitude.
For now, he appears to be steeling himself. His most recent report on the federal judiciary — issued a few weeks before Mr. Trump’s inauguration — opens with a parable about King George III, who tried to bring colonial judges to heel, and brims with concern about “violence, intimidation and defiance directed at judges.” This has been interpreted, in part, as a swipe at Vice President JD Vance, who has been peddling the idea that judges have no business telling a president how to “control his own government.”
If the chief justice intended a shot across the bow, Mr. Vance remains undeterred. He and other Republicans — egged on by Elon Musk and right-wing legal theorists — continue to talk, gleefully, about defying the court. This includes the president. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Mr. Trump recently posted on social media, a nod to Napoleon, if not other dictators. A day later, he reposted the quote, proudly attaching it to a headline stating that his administration was refusing to obey a district court order unfreezing billions of dollars in federal grants.
It is possible that these threats are theater, meant to cow the justices into compliance. But it is more likely that they are not. Mr. Trump is clearly well aware that the court is unpopular and no longer commands the reverence that long protected it from attacks. According to a Marquette Law School poll, a majority of Americans believe that politics, not law, drives most Supreme Court decisions. The regal lifestyle of Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — bankrolled by wealthy benefactors and only disclosed under duress — has also eroded the esteem the court once enjoyed. There was little outcry when Mr. Trump maligned the court in the past, when he called justices “incompetent” and “dumb,” when he accused the court of sending “shotgun blasts into the face” of Republicans. He has felt free — perhaps never freer than now — to show contempt for judges, juries, lawyers, the rule of law and the Constitution. The question is not whether Mr. Trump will defy the court, but how soon and to what extent.
A clash is coming, despite the court’s sympathy for some aspects of the Trump agenda. In recent years, with gathering force, Chief Justice Roberts and his conservative supermajority have been crippling federal agencies, dismantling environmental regulations, weakening voter protections, stripping away reproductive rights and undercutting racial diversity — advance work, all of it, for Project 2025. The assault on the “deep state” echoes the chief justice’s own disdain for government “functionaries” and his indulgent view of executive power. In a 2020 opinion, he expanded the president’s power to fire civil servants without cause. That decision, as Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent, “wipes out” the independence of the agency in question, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And now Mr. Trump, following this lead, has sought to wipe out the agency itself. He has effectively shut the C.F.P.B. down, locking out its staff members and preparing to return its funding to the Federal Reserve. When you put a man above the law, as the court did in last year’s presidential immunity case, he’s going to act like he’s above the law.
At some point, presumably, the justices will draw the line. They may allow Mr. Trump to purge parts of the federal government, but it is hard to imagine them endorsing his attempt to revoke birthright citizenship. His executive order, issued on his first day in office, is dressed up in legal language but directly contravenes the 14th Amendment, as more than one judge has pointed out. The court also seems unlikely to countenance Mr. Trump’s freeze of funds that Congress appropriated. A long line of cases, including a recent 7-2 opinion by Justice Thomas, affirms “the principle of legislative supremacy over fiscal matters.” As the administration continues, by increasingly artful means, to undermine court orders that it restart spending, the fundamental issue becomes starker and clearer. “If presidents can impound appropriated funds at any time and for any reason,” Georgetown Law’s Stephen Vladeck observes, “then there’s not much point to having a legislature.”
In any consequential ruling, Chief Justice Roberts will likely be tempted to narrow his reasoning, soften his tone and, if possible, leave Mr. Trump out of it. Such was the case in Trump v. Anderson, which tiptoed awkwardly around the central question of whether Mr. Trump had engaged in insurrection and should therefore be barred from federal office. The chief justice’s instinct for self-preservation is strong, as is his faith in sleights of hand. But that faith would be disastrous here. A vague, performatively nuanced opinion will almost certainly be perceived by the White House as weakness — and a green light to further lawlessness.
On Aug. 22, 1973, the day that a Federal District Court judge heard arguments in the Watergate tapes case, President Richard Nixon refused to say whether he would comply with anything less than a “definitive order” by the Supreme Court. Nearly a year later, an 8-0 court ruled against him. (Justice William Rehnquist, who had served in the Nixon administration, recused himself.) For Chief Justice Roberts, unanimity will be hard — even impossible — to achieve in most cases concerning Mr. Trump’s actions as president. During Mr. Trump’s first term, when the court ruled that he had improperly revoked the immigration program known as DACA, the justices split 5-4; in a dissent, Justice Thomas accused the chief justice of writing an opinion with “no basis in law.” But even a divided decision can be definitive by the force of its logic, the directness of its language, the unambiguity of its intent. Nothing less will suffice.
Of course, Mr. Trump might defy the court anyway — a historical breach with consequences that can scarcely be imagined. It could be the spark that sets off a revolt against the courts: copycat noncompliance by Republican governors and attorneys general. If any of this comes to pass, the chief justice will have no real recourse. The cudgelsthat lower courts use to sanction and disbar lawyers or fine officials and agencies are of little use against a rogue commander in chief. The court could threaten to hold the president in contempt. But that threat would be hollow: Without the support of federal marshals, who answer to Mr. Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, the court cannot enforce its order. And Congress, for its part, will almost certainly line up behind Mr. Trump — as it has in nearly all matters, even when its own powers are being usurped. The court will stand alone, abandoned; and Chief Justice Roberts, it is safe to assume, will not escalate a conflict his institution has already lost.
He will, however, have one last tool in his arsenal: his voice. He might be reluctant to use it. In his year-end report, he observed that the judiciary is “ill-suited” to defend its own integrity, because “judges typically speak only through their decisions. We do not call press conferences or generally issue rebuttals.” But there is nothing typical about a constitutional crisis. Charles Evans Hughes, one of John Roberts’s most esteemed predecessors, might provide a model. In 1937, when Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed to expand the Supreme Court by adding up to six justices, Chief Justice Hughes drafted a letter refuting Roosevelt’s false claims about the court and permitted it to be read aloud in the Senate chamber. Critics called it a breach of judicial protocol, but Hughes took pride in dealing the court-packing plan a blow. “This letter,” he observed later, “appears to have had a devastating effect.”
That is too much to hope for here. No letter is going to deter Mr. Trump. Still, Chief Justice Roberts should say his piece. If Mr. Trump flouts a court ruling, the nation will need its chief justice to explain what is happening — and why the executive branch, for all its prerogatives, must be bound by the Constitution. The nation will need him to summon the bravery displayed by Danielle Sassoon — the interim U.S. attorney who quit last week rather than implement a corrupt order from the Justice Department — and by Hagan Scotten, the assistant U.S. attorney (and former Roberts clerk) who did the same. In a letter to the attorney general, Ms. Sassoon called the department’s directive “breathtaking and dangerous.” At a time of fear and acquiescence, her example has inspired many. Let us hope the chief justice is among them. His responsibility is greater; his courage must be, too.
More on John Roberts and the Supreme Court:
Opinion | Jeff Shesol
The Tragedy of John Roberts
July 3, 2023
Opinion | Ross Douthat
John Roberts, Conservative Statesman
July 1, 2023
How Roberts Shaped Trump’s Supreme Court Winning Streak
Sept. 15, 2024
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jeff Shesol is the author of several books, including “Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court” and “Mercury Rising: John Glenn, John Kennedy and the New Battleground of the Cold War.”
https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/civil-rights-leaders/charles-hamilton-houston
NAACP History: Charles Hamilton Houston (1895-1950)
Charles Hamilton Houston (September 3, 1895-April 22, 1950) was a legendary black lawyer and teacher who helped play a major role in dismantling the national Jim Crow laws and helped train and mentor future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. Known as “The Man Who Killed Jim Crow”, he played a role in nearly every civil rights case before the Supreme Court between 1930 and Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Houston’s brilliant plan to attack and defeat Jim Crow segregation by using the inequality of the “separate but equal” doctrine (from the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision) as it pertained to public education in the United States was the master stroke that brought about the landmark Brown decision.
“This fight for equality of educational opportunity (was) not an isolated struggle. All our struggles must tie in together and support one another. . .We must remain on the alert and push the struggle farther with all our might.”
Born in Washington, D.C., Houston prepared for college at Dunbar High School in Washington, then matriculated to Amherst College, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1915.
From 1915 to 1917, Houston taught English at Howard University. From 1917 to 1919, he was a First Lieutenant in the United States Infantry, based in Fort Meade, Maryland. Houston later wrote:
“The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in my dying for a world ruled by them. I made up my mind that if I got through this war I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back.”
In the fall of 1919, he entered Harvard Law School, earning his Bachelor of Laws degree 1922 and his Doctor of Laws degree in 1923. In 1922, he became the first African American to serve as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
After studying at the University of Madrid in 1924, Houston was admitted to the District of Columbia bar that same year and joined forces with his father in practicing law. Beginning in the 1930s, Houston served as the first special counsel to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and therefore was involved with the majority of civil rights cases from then until his death on April 22, 1950.
He later joined Howard Law School’s faculty, establishing a long-standing relationship between Howard and Harvard law schools. While at Howard, he was a mentor to Thurgood Marshall, who argued Brown v. Board of Education and was later appointed to the Supreme Court.
Houston used his post at Howard to recruit talented students into the NAACP’s legal efforts (among them Marshall and Oliver Hill, the first- and second-ranked students in the class of 1933, both of whom were drafted into organization’s legal battles by Houston).
By the mid-1930s, two separate anti-lynching bills backed by the NAACP had failed to gain passage, and the organization had won a landmark victory against restrictive housing covenants that excluded blacks from particular neighborhoods only to see the achievement undermined by subsequent legal precedents.
Houston struck upon the idea that unequal education was the Achilles heel of Jim Crow. By demonstrating the failure of states to even try to live up to the 1896 rule of “separate but equal,” Houston hoped to finally overturn the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that had given birth to that phrase.
His target was broad, but the evidence was numerous. Southern states collectively spent less than half of what was allotted for white students on education for blacks; there were even greater disparities in individual school districts. Black schools were equipped with castoff supplies from white ones and built with inferior materials. Black facilities appeared to be part of a crude segregationist satire – a design to make black education a contradiction in terms.
Houston designed a strategy of attacking segregation in law schools – forcing states to either create costly parallel law schools or integrate the existing ones. The strategy had hidden benefits: since law students were predominantly male, Houston sought to neutralize the age-old argument that allowing blacks to attend white institutions would lead to miscegenation, or “race-mixing”. He also reasoned that judges deciding the cases might be more sympathetic to plaintiffs who were pursuing careers in law. Finally, by challenging segregation in graduate schools, the NAACP lawyers would bypass the inflammatory issue of miscegenation among young children.
The successful ruling handed down in the Brown decision was testament to the master strategy formulated by Houston.
Houston was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans.
Houston was posthumously awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal in 1950 and, in 1958, the main building of the Howard University School of Law was dedicated as Charles Hamilton Houston Hall. His importance became more broadly known through the success of Thurgood Marshall and after the 1983 publication of Genna Rae McNeil’s Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights.
Houston is the namesake of the Charles Houston Bar Association and the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, which opened in the fall of 2005. In addition, there is a professorship at Harvard Law named after him.
Related Articles:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_people_houst.html
http://www.charleshamiltonhouston.org
https://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/2012/12/statement-on-founding-fathers-slavery.html
FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES
(Originally posted on December 5, 2012)
“This fight for equality of educational opportunity (was) not an isolated struggle. All our struggles must tie in together and support one another. . .We must remain on the alert and push the struggle farther with all our might.”
Born in Washington, D.C., Houston prepared for college at Dunbar High School in Washington, then matriculated to Amherst College, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1915.
From 1915 to 1917, Houston taught English at Howard University. From 1917 to 1919, he was a First Lieutenant in the United States Infantry, based in Fort Meade, Maryland. Houston later wrote:
“The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in my dying for a world ruled by them. I made up my mind that if I got through this war I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back.”
In the fall of 1919, he entered Harvard Law School, earning his Bachelor of Laws degree 1922 and his Doctor of Laws degree in 1923. In 1922, he became the first African American to serve as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
After studying at the University of Madrid in 1924, Houston was admitted to the District of Columbia bar that same year and joined forces with his father in practicing law. Beginning in the 1930s, Houston served as the first special counsel to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and therefore was involved with the majority of civil rights cases from then until his death on April 22, 1950.
He later joined Howard Law School’s faculty, establishing a long-standing relationship between Howard and Harvard law schools. While at Howard, he was a mentor to Thurgood Marshall, who argued Brown v. Board of Education and was later appointed to the Supreme Court.
Houston used his post at Howard to recruit talented students into the NAACP’s legal efforts (among them Marshall and Oliver Hill, the first- and second-ranked students in the class of 1933, both of whom were drafted into organization’s legal battles by Houston).
By the mid-1930s, two separate anti-lynching bills backed by the NAACP had failed to gain passage, and the organization had won a landmark victory against restrictive housing covenants that excluded blacks from particular neighborhoods only to see the achievement undermined by subsequent legal precedents.
Houston struck upon the idea that unequal education was the Achilles heel of Jim Crow. By demonstrating the failure of states to even try to live up to the 1896 rule of “separate but equal,” Houston hoped to finally overturn the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that had given birth to that phrase.
His target was broad, but the evidence was numerous. Southern states collectively spent less than half of what was allotted for white students on education for blacks; there were even greater disparities in individual school districts. Black schools were equipped with castoff supplies from white ones and built with inferior materials. Black facilities appeared to be part of a crude segregationist satire – a design to make black education a contradiction in terms.
Houston designed a strategy of attacking segregation in law schools – forcing states to either create costly parallel law schools or integrate the existing ones. The strategy had hidden benefits: since law students were predominantly male, Houston sought to neutralize the age-old argument that allowing blacks to attend white institutions would lead to miscegenation, or “race-mixing”. He also reasoned that judges deciding the cases might be more sympathetic to plaintiffs who were pursuing careers in law. Finally, by challenging segregation in graduate schools, the NAACP lawyers would bypass the inflammatory issue of miscegenation among young children.
The successful ruling handed down in the Brown decision was testament to the master strategy formulated by Houston.
Houston was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans.
Houston was posthumously awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal in 1950 and, in 1958, the main building of the Howard University School of Law was dedicated as Charles Hamilton Houston Hall. His importance became more broadly known through the success of Thurgood Marshall and after the 1983 publication of Genna Rae McNeil’s Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights.
Houston is the namesake of the Charles Houston Bar Association and the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, which opened in the fall of 2005. In addition, there is a professorship at Harvard Law named after him.
Related Articles:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_people_houst.html
http://www.charleshamiltonhouston.org
https://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/2012/12/statement-on-founding-fathers-slavery.html
FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES
(Originally posted on December 5, 2012)
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
STATEMENT ON THE 'FOUNDING FATHERS', SLAVERY, AND THE U.S. CONSTITUTION BY THE LATE, GREAT THURGOOD MARSHALL (1908--1993)
Thurgood Marshall in 1936 after he joined the NAACP.
"I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever "fixed" at the Philadelphia Convention. 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. When contemporary Americans cite "The Constitution," they invoke a concept that is vastly different from what the Framers barely began to construct two centuries ago.
For a sense of the evolving nature of the Constitution we need look no further than the first three words of the document's preamble: 'We the People." When the Founding Fathers used this phrase in 1787, they did not have in mind the majority of America's citizens. "We the People" included, in the words of the Framers, "the whole Number of free Persons." On a matter so basic as the right to vote, for example, Negro slaves were excluded, although they were counted for representational purposes at threefifths each. Women did not gain the right to vote for over a hundred and thirty years.
These omissions were intentional. The record of the Framers' debates on the slave question is especially clear: The Southern States acceded to the demands of the New England States for giving Congress broad power to regulate commerce, in exchange for the right to continue the slave trade. The economic interests of the regions coalesced: New Englanders engaged in the "carrying trade" would profit from transporting slaves from Africa as well as goods produced in America by slave labor. The perpetuation of slavery ensured the primary source of wealth in the Southern States."
Despite this clear understanding of the role slavery would play in the new republic, use of the words "slaves" and "slavery" was carefully avoided in the original document. Political representation in the lower House of Congress was to be based on the population of "free Persons" in each State, plus threefifths of all "other Persons." Moral principles against slavery, for those who had them, were compromised, with no explanation of the conflicting principles for which the American Revolutionary War had ostensibly been fought: the selfevident truths "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
--Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, 1908-1993, Remarks delivered in speech on the "Framers/Founding Fathers", the U.S. Constitution, and Slavery" on May 6, 1987 in Maui, Hawaii
For a sense of the evolving nature of the Constitution we need look no further than the first three words of the document's preamble: 'We the People." When the Founding Fathers used this phrase in 1787, they did not have in mind the majority of America's citizens. "We the People" included, in the words of the Framers, "the whole Number of free Persons." On a matter so basic as the right to vote, for example, Negro slaves were excluded, although they were counted for representational purposes at threefifths each. Women did not gain the right to vote for over a hundred and thirty years.
These omissions were intentional. The record of the Framers' debates on the slave question is especially clear: The Southern States acceded to the demands of the New England States for giving Congress broad power to regulate commerce, in exchange for the right to continue the slave trade. The economic interests of the regions coalesced: New Englanders engaged in the "carrying trade" would profit from transporting slaves from Africa as well as goods produced in America by slave labor. The perpetuation of slavery ensured the primary source of wealth in the Southern States."
Despite this clear understanding of the role slavery would play in the new republic, use of the words "slaves" and "slavery" was carefully avoided in the original document. Political representation in the lower House of Congress was to be based on the population of "free Persons" in each State, plus threefifths of all "other Persons." Moral principles against slavery, for those who had them, were compromised, with no explanation of the conflicting principles for which the American Revolutionary War had ostensibly been fought: the selfevident truths "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
--Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, 1908-1993, Remarks delivered in speech on the "Framers/Founding Fathers", the U.S. Constitution, and Slavery" on May 6, 1987 in Maui, Hawaii
THURGOOD MARSHALL, 1908-1993
Born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908, Thurgood Marshall was the grandson of a slave. His father, William Marshall, instilled in him from youth an appreciation for the United States Constitution and the rule of law. After completing high school in 1925, Thurgood followed his brother, William Aubrey Marshall, at the historically black Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
His classmates at Lincoln included a distinguished group of future Black leaders such as the poet and author Langston Hughes, the future President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and musician Cab Calloway. Just before graduation, he married his first wife, Vivian “Buster” Burey. Their twenty-five year marriage ended with her death from cancer in 1955.
In 1930, he applied to the University of Maryland Law School, but was denied admission because he was Black. This was an event that was to haunt him and direct his future professional life. Thurgood sought admission and was accepted at the Howard University Law School that same year and came under the immediate influence of the dynamic new dean, Charles Hamilton Houston, who instilled in all of his students the desire to apply the tenets of the Constitution to all Americans.
Paramount in Houston’s outlook was the need to overturn the 1898 Supreme Court ruling, Plessy v. Ferguson which established the legal doctrine called, “separate but equal.” Marshall’s first major court case came in 1933 when he successfully sued the University of Maryland to admit a young African American Amherst University graduate named Donald Gaines Murray. Applauding Marshall’s victory, author H.L. Mencken wrote that the decision of denial by the University of Maryland Law School was “brutal and absurd,” and they should not object to the “presence among them of a self-respecting and ambitious young Afro-American well prepared for his studies by four years of hard work in a class A college.”
Thurgood Marshall followed his Howard University mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston to New York and later became Chief Counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). During this period, Mr. Marshall was asked by the United Nations and the United Kingdom to help draft the constitutions of the emerging African nations of Ghana and what is now Tanzania. It was felt that the person who so successfully fought for the rights of America’s oppressed minority would be the perfect person to ensure the rights of the White citizens in these two former European colonies. After amassing an impressive record of Supreme Court challenges to state-sponsored discrimination, including the landmark Brown v. Board decision in 1954, President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In this capacity, he wrote over 150 decisions including support for the rights of immigrants, limiting government intrusion in cases involving illegal search and seizure, double jeopardy, and right to privacy issues. Biographers Michael Davis and Hunter Clark note that, “none of his (Marshall’s) 98 majority decisions was ever reversed by the Supreme Court.” In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Judge Marshall to the office of U.S. Solicitor General. Before his subsequent nomination to the United States Supreme Court in 1967, Thurgood Marshall won 14 of the 19 cases he argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of the government. Indeed, Thurgood Marshall represented and won more cases before the United States Supreme Court than any other American.
Until his retirement from the highest court in the land, Justice Marshall established a record for supporting the voiceless American. Having honed his skills since the case against the University of Maryland, he developed a profound sensitivity to injustice by way of the crucible of racial discrimination in this country. As an Associate Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall leaves a legacy that expands that early sensitivity to include all of America’s voiceless. Justice Marshall died on January 24, 1993.
Posted by Kofi Natambu at 9:41 AM
Labels: 1787, Constitutional Law, Critical theory, Declaration of Independence, Founding Fathers, Law and Ideology,Slavery, The Framers, The Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall
