William J. Brennan Jr. | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 1972 | |
| Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States | |
| In office October 16, 1956 – July 20, 1990[1] | |
| Nominated by | Dwight D. Eisenhower |
| Preceded by | Sherman Minton |
| Succeeded by | David Souter |
| Associate Justice of theNew Jersey Supreme Court | |
| In office April 1, 1951 – October 13, 1956 | |
| Nominated by | Alfred E. Driscoll |
| Preceded by | Henry E. Ackerson Jr.[2] |
| Succeeded by | Joseph Weintraub |
| Personal details | |
| Born | William Joseph Brennan Jr. (1906-04-25)April 25, 1906 Newark, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | July 24, 1997(1997-07-24) (aged 91) Arlington, Virginia, U.S. |
| Resting place | Arlington National Cemetery |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 3 |
| Education | |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | United States |
| Branch/service | United States Army |
| Years of service | 1942–1946 |
| Rank | Colonel |
| Battles/wars | World War II |
| Awards | Legion of Merit |
William J. Brennan Jr. delivers the opinion of the Court inPenn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City Recorded June 26, 1978 | |
William Joseph Brennan Jr. (April 25, 1906 – July 24, 1997) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as anAssociate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1956 to 1990. He was theeighth-longest serving justice in Supreme Court history, and was known for being a leader of the Court's liberal wing.[3]
Born toIrish immigrant parents inNewark, New Jersey, Brennan studiedeconomics at theUniversity of Pennsylvania and then attendedHarvard Law School. He entered private legal practice in New Jersey and served in theU.S. Army duringWorld War II. He was appointed in 1951 to theSupreme Court of New Jersey. Shortly before the1956 presidential election, PresidentDwight D. Eisenhower used arecess appointment to place Brennan on the Supreme Court. Brennan wonSenate confirmation the following year. He remained on the Court until his retirement in 1990, and was succeeded byDavid Souter.
On the Supreme Court, Brennan was known for his outspokenprogressive views, including opposition to the death penalty as he dissented in more than 1,400 cases in which the Supreme Court refused to review a death sentence, and support forabortion rights andgay rights. He authored numerouslandmark case opinions, including:Baker v. Carr (1962), establishing that the apportionment oflegislative districts is ajusticiable issue;New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), which required "actual malice" in libel suits brought by public officials;Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), which established a legal right tocontraception for unmarried people and helped solidify thesexual revolution; andCraig v. Boren (1976) which established that laws which discriminate on the basis of sex are subject toheightened scrutiny under theEqual Protection Clause.
Due to his ability to shape a wide variety of opinions and bargain for votes in many cases, he was considered to be among the Court's most influential members. Associate JusticeAntonin Scalia, who served alongside Brennan between 1986 and 1990, called Brennan "probably the most influential Justice of the [20th] century."[4][5]
William J. Brennan Jr. was born on April 25, 1906, inNewark, New Jersey, the second of eight children. Both his parents, William and Agnes (McDermott) Brennan, were Irish immigrants. They met in the United States, although both were originally fromCounty Roscommon in Ireland. William Brennan Sr. had little education and worked as a metal polisher, but rose to a position of leadership, serving as the Commissioner of Public Safety for the city of Newark from 1927 to 1930.
Brennan attended public schools in Newark, and graduated fromBarringer High School in 1924. He was accepted toPrinceton University, but enrolled at theUniversity of Pennsylvania at his father's wishes. After spending a year in theCollege of Arts & Sciences, Brennan transferred to theWharton School, graduating in 1928 with aBachelor of Arts ineconomics,cum laude.[6][7] While there, he joinedDelta Tau Delta fraternity.[8] Brennan then attended Harvard Law School, where he was a member of theHarvard Legal Aid Bureau. He graduated in 1931 with aBachelor of Laws ranked near the top of his class.[9]
When he was 21, Brennan married Marjorie Leonard, whom he had met in high school. They eventually had three children: William III, Nancy, and Hugh.[10]
After graduating from Harvard Law School, Brennan entered private practice in his home state ofNew Jersey, where he practicedlabor law at the firm of Pitney Hardin (which would later becomeDay Pitney).[11] During World War II, Brennan was commissioned in theArmy as amajor in March 1942, and left as acolonel in 1946.[12] He did legal work for the ordnance division and earned theLegion of Merit Award.[13][14] In early 1946, he served as a staff member of theUnited States Undersecretary of War.[13] Later that year, he returned to Pitney Hardin and continued his practice for the next three years.[13] His partners added his name to the firm shortly after his return.[13]
In 1949, Brennan was appointed to the Superior Court (atrial court) byGovernor of New JerseyAlfred E. Driscoll. In 1951, Driscoll appointed him to theSupreme Court of New Jersey.
Brennan was given arecess appointment as anassociate justice of the United States Supreme Court by PresidentDwight D. Eisenhower on October 15, 1956,[15] shortly before the1956 presidential election, and wassworn into office the following day.[1] The president's advisers thought the appointment of a Roman CatholicDemocrat from the Northeast would woo critical voters in the upcoming re-election campaign for Eisenhower, aRepublican.[16] CardinalFrancis Spellman had asked Eisenhower to appoint a Catholic to the court. Brennan was one of two candidates who met Eisenhower's three criteria: experience on lower courts; relative youth and good health; and a Catholic.[17][18]
Brennan gained the attention ofHerbert Brownell,United States Attorney General and Eisenhower's chief legal affairs adviser, when Brennan had to give a speech at a conference (as a substitute for New Jersey Supreme Court Chief JusticeArthur Vanderbilt).[19] To Brownell, Brennan's speech seemed to suggest a marked conservatism, especially on criminal matters.[19]
Hisnomination, formally submitted to theSenate Judiciary Committee on January 14, 1957,[15] faced a small amount of controversy from two angles. TheNational Liberal League opposed the nomination of a Catholic, thinking he would rely on his religious beliefs rather than the Constitution when ruling,[16] and SenatorJoseph McCarthy had read transcripts of Brennan's speech where he decried overzealous anti-Communist investigations as "witch-hunts." After a confirmation hearing in which Brennan defended himself against McCarthy's attacks and proclaimed that he would rule solely on the basis of the Constitution and not on Church law,[20] he was confirmed by a near-unanimous vote, with only Senator McCarthy voting against him.[21]
Other factors playing into Brennan's appointment were his status as a state court judge – no state judge had been appointed to the High Court sinceBenjamin N. Cardozo in 1932 – and Eisenhower's desire to appear bipartisan after his appointments of two Republicans:Earl Warren (former Governor of California) andJohn Marshall Harlan II.[22]
Brennan filled the seat vacated by JusticeSherman Minton. He held the post until his retirement on July 20, 1990, for health reasons; he was succeeded on the Court by JusticeDavid Souter. He was the last federal judge in active service to have been appointed to his position by President Eisenhower.[a] Brennan then taught atGeorgetown University Law Center until 1994. With 1,360 opinions,[23] he is second only toWilliam O. Douglas in number of opinions written while a Supreme Court justice.[24]
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An outspoken liberal throughout his career, he played a leading role in theWarren Court's expansion of individual rights. Brennan played a 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 theFirst Amendment (Roth v. United States), and civil rights (Green v. County School Board of New Kent County) were some of the most important opinions of the Warren Era. Brennan's role in expanding free speech rights under the First Amendment is particularly notable, as he wrote the Court's opinion in 1964'sNew York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which created constitutional restrictions on the law oflibel. It was Brennan who coined the phrase "chilling effect", in 1965'sDombrowski 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".
In the 1962–1963 term, one of Brennan's law clerks wasRichard A. Posner, who later became a founder of the field ofLaw and Economics and one of the most influential legal scholars in the United States.[25][26][27][28][29]
On the less liberalBurger 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 (Furman v. Georgia (1972) on the death penalty andRoe v. Wade (1973) on abortion). With the departure of moderatePotter Stewart in 1981, the ascension of the most conservative member of the court,William Rehnquist, to the position of Chief Justice, following the retirement ofWarren Burger, Brennan found himself more frequently isolated. At times, his opinions would be joined only byThurgood Marshall since, by 1975, they were the last remaining liberals of theWarren Court.[b] That like-mindedness 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 inFurman 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 failed to convince any other justice of this opinion, except Justice Harry Blackmun, but only in 1994, after Brennan's retirement.[30]
Brennan authored three Supreme Court opinions holding that a plaintiff has a cause of action for money damages (compensatory and punitive) arising solely out of an alleged violation of the Bill of Rights.[31][32][33][34] InBivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, Brennan so held with respect to theUnreasonable Search and Seizure clause of theFourth Amendment.[35] InDavis v. Passman, Brennan extended this rationale to the equal protection component of theDue Process Clause of theFifth Amendment, in a suit for gender discrimination in employment against a former Congressman (Congressional staffers were explicitly excluded fromTitle VII of the Civil Rights Act).[36] InCarlson v. Green, Brennan extended this rationale again to theCruel and Unusual Punishment clause of theEighth Amendment, in a suit by the estate of a deceased federal prisoner (even though the plaintiff also had a cause of action under theFederal Tort Claims Act).[37]
During the same period, Brennan began to adopt and promote a coherent and expansive vision ofpersonal jurisdiction. He authored the sole dissent inHelicopteros Nacionales de Colombia, S. A. v. Hall, definingminimum contacts very broadly for the purposes ofgeneral jurisdiction, and influential dissents and partial concurrences inWorld-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson andAsahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court on the subject ofspecific jurisdiction, holding to a simple "stream-of-commerce" analysis for product liability cases and emphasizing the role of fairness in the Court's analysis of the holding inInternational Shoe Co. v. Washington. InBurger King v. Rudzewicz, Brennan authored the majority opinion and extended his broad view of personal jurisdiction to areas of business contracts and franchising. The upshot of Brennan's analysis is an expansion of the jurisdiction of state courts, particularly over corporations; state courts are typically more sympathetic to small, weak plaintiffs than to large, powerful corporate defendants. In this process, he frequently clashed with Justice Scalia over this issue, and uncharacteristically dissented from Justice Marshall's majority opinion on the subject inShaffer v. Heitner.[citation needed]
In his penultimate and final terms on the Court, he wrote the controversial majority opinions forTexas v. Johnson andUnited States v. Eichman, respectively. In both cases, the Court held that the First Amendment protects desecration of the United States flag.
Brennan's wife Marjorie died in December 1982. Slightly more than three months later, in March 1983 at age 76, he married Mary Fowler,[38] who had served as his secretary for 26 years.[39] 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 toBermuda."[40]
Brennan strongly believed in the Bill of Rights, arguing early on in his career that it should be applied to the states in addition to the federal government.[41] He often took positions in favor of individual rights against the state, favoring criminal defendants, minorities, the poor, and other underrepresented groups. Furthermore, he generally shied away from the absolutist liberal positions of JusticesHugo Black andWilliam O. Douglas, being very amenable to compromise in order to win a majority of Justices.[42] Brennan's conservative detractors charged that he was a purveyor ofjudicial activism, accusing him of deciding outcomes before coming up with a legal rationale for them.[43] At his retirement, Brennan said the case he thought was most important wasGoldberg v. Kelly, which ruled that a local, state or federal government could not terminate welfare payments to a person without a prior individual evidentiary hearing.[44]
In the 1980s, as theReagan administration and theRehnquist Court threatened to "roll back" the decisions of theWarren Court, Brennan became more vocal about his jurisprudential views. In a 1985 speech at Georgetown University, Brennan criticized Attorney GeneralEdwin Meese's call for a "jurisprudence of original intention" as "arrogance cloaked as humility"[45] and advocated reading the U.S. Constitution to protect rights of "human dignity".
Brennan was also less interested instare decisis or the avoidance of "absolutist" positions where the death penalty was concerned, as he believed that the deliberate taking of human life by the state, as a punishment, was inherently cruel and unusual. Brennan andThurgood Marshall, Brennan's closest ally in the Court, concluded inFurman v. Georgia that the death penalty was, in all circumstances, unconstitutional, and never accepted the legitimacy ofGregg v. Georgia, which ruled that the death penalty was constitutional four years later. Thereafter, Brennan or Marshall took turns, joined by the other, in issuing a dissent in every denial ofcertiorari in a capital case, and from every decision in a case which the Courtdid take which failed to vacate a sentence of death.[46]
Brennan also authored a dissent from the denial ofcertiorari inGlass v. Louisiana. InGlass, the Court chose not to hear a case that challenged the constitutionality of the use of theelectric chair as a form of execution. Brennan wrote:[47]
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 by stating that electrocution is "nothing less than the contemporary technological equivalent of burning people at the stake." Despite his personal stance against the death penalty, Brennan implicitly acknowledged its current reality by offering his thoughts in other legal aspects of court cases, if capital punishment was to apply to the given case. InStrickland v. Washington, a case involving a capital defendant, although Brennan disagreed with keeping the verdict of death sentence, his concurrence agreed with the test forineffective assistance of counsel that the majority opinion established. (Marshall dissented in this case, objecting to the new test and stating that the counsel in the trial was ineffective.)
Brennan voted with the majority inRoe v. Wade which legalized abortion nationally and helped craft the decision.[18] Brennan wrote the majority opinion inRoth v. United States which set new standards for obscenity laws, allowing some prosecutions, but drastically loosening the laws overall.[48] He later reversed his position in dissent inMiller v. California arguing that obscenity laws were unconstitutional.[49] Although Brennan joined the majority inUnited States v. O'Brien which upheld the constitutionality of laws banningdraft card burning, he later opposed theVietnam War and dissented several times when the Supreme Court refused to hear challenges to its legality.[50] In a dissent inSan Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez Brennan argued that unequal funding of poor and wealthy school districts violated theEqual Protection Clause.[51]
Brennan supportedgay rights. In a dissent from a denial of certiorari in 1985 involving a lesbian teacher fired for her sexual orientation, Brennan publicly criticizedhomophobia, writing "Homosexuals have historically been the object of deep and sustained pernicious hostility, and it is fair to say that discrimination against homosexuals is likely to reflect deep-seated prejudice rather than rationality."[52] He joined the dissent inBowers v. Hardwick, which allowed states to prosecute consensual homosexual sodomy, a decision which the Court announced in June 1986.[53]
He is regarded as one of themost liberal justices in the history of the court.[54]
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Brennan's retirement in 1990 was precipitated by a mild stroke. While he initially intended to continue serving, his doctors told him that he would be at risk of a more debilitating stroke if he kept working.[55]
Throughout retirement, Brennan maintained a friendly relationship with his successor,David Souter.[55] In 1995, theBrennan Center for Justice opened atNew York University, a research institute created at the initiative of several of Brennan's former clerks, and named in his honor.[55]
In November 1996, Brennan fell and broke his hip, and underwent rehabilitation for the injury at a nursing home inArlington, Virginia, where he died on July 24, 1997, at the age of 91.[55] He was buried atArlington National Cemetery, beside his first wife and near the gravesites of other Supreme Court justices.[56]
As a result of his long and distinguished career on the United States Supreme Court, Brennan was honored with many different awards. In 1969, he was awarded theLaetare Medal by theUniversity of Notre Dame, considered the most prestigious award forAmerican Catholics.[57] In 1987, Brennan received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually byJefferson Awards.[58] In 1989, the historicHudson County Courthouse inJersey City, New Jersey, which had opened in 1910, was renamed the William J. Brennan Court House in his honor[59] and, in that same year, he received theFreedom Medal.[60] On November 30, 1993, PresidentBill Clinton presented Brennan with thePresidential Medal of Freedom.[61]
Upon his death, Brennanlay in repose in the Great Hall of theUnited States Supreme Court Building.[62]
Years after his death, in 2010, Brennan was inducted into theNew Jersey Hall of Fame[63] andWilliam J. Brennan High School was founded in San Antonio, Texas, honoring him.[64] Brennan Park across from the historicEssex County Veterans Courthouse inNewark, New Jersey, was named in Brennan's honor and a statue of him was erected in front of the Essex County Hall of Records by historianGuy Sterling.[65][66]
It is often reported that Pitney, Hardin & Ward, now located in Morristown, New Jersey, was founded by one Supreme Court justice and produced another. But it is not true.
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| Preceded by | Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 1956–1990 | Succeeded by |
