Hugo Black | |
|---|---|
 Black photographed by Harris & Ewing, 1937 | |
| Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States | |
| In office August 19, 1937 – September 17, 1971[1] | |
| Nominated by | Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| Preceded by | Willis Van Devanter |
| Succeeded by | Lewis F. Powell Jr. |
| Chair of the Senate Education Committee | |
| In office January 3, 1937 – August 19, 1937 | |
| Preceded by | David Walsh |
| Succeeded by | Elbert Thomas |
| Secretary of the Senate Democratic Conference | |
| In office 1927–1937 | |
| Leader | Joseph Taylor Robinson |
| Preceded by | William H. King |
| Succeeded by | Joshua B. Lee |
| United States Senator from Alabama | |
| In office March 4, 1927 – August 19, 1937 | |
| Preceded by | Oscar Underwood |
| Succeeded by | Dixie Graves |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Hugo Lafayette Black February 27, 1886 Harlan, Alabama, U.S. |
| Died | September 25, 1971 (aged 85) Bethesda, Maryland, U.S. |
| Resting place | Arlington National Cemetery |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouses | Josephine Foster
(m. 1921; died 1951)Elizabeth DeMeritte (m. 1957) |
| Children | 3, including Hugo and Sterling |
| Education | University of Alabama (LLB) |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | United States |
| Branch/service | United States Army |
| Years of service | 1917–1919 |
| Rank |  Captain |
| Unit | 81st Field Artillery Regiment |
| Battles/wars | World War I |
| [2] | |
Hugo Lafayette Black (February 27, 1886 – September 25, 1971) was an American lawyer, politician, and jurist who served as a U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1927 to 1937 and as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1937 to 1971. A member of the Democratic Party and a devoted New Dealer,[3] Black endorsed Franklin D. Roosevelt in both the 1932 and 1936 presidential elections.[4]
Before he became a senator, Black espoused anti-Catholic views and was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. An article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that he temporarily resigned from the Klan in 1925 to bolster his senatorial campaign, before quietly rejoining the Klan in 1926.[5] In 1937, upon being appointed to the Supreme Court, Black said: "Before becoming a Senator I dropped the Klan. I have had nothing to do with it since that time. I abandoned it. I completely discontinued any association with the organization."[6][7] Black served as the secretary of the Senate Democratic Conference and the chair of the Senate Education Committee during his decade in the Senate. Having gained a reputation in the Senate as a reformer, Black was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Roosevelt and confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 63 to 16 (six Democratic Senators and 10 Republican Senators voted against him). He was the first of nine Roosevelt appointees to the court,[8] and he outlasted all except for William O. Douglas.[9]
The fifth longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history, Black was one of the most influential Supreme Court justices in the 20th century.[10] He is noted for using historical evidence to support textualist arguments, his position that the liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights were imposed on the states ("incorporated") by the Fourteenth Amendment, and his absolutist stance on the First Amendment, often declaring "No law [abridging the freedom of speech] means no law."[11][6] Black expanded individual rights in his opinions in cases such as Gideon v. Wainwright, Engel v. Vitale, and Wesberry v. Sanders.
Black's views were not uniformly liberal. During World War II, he wrote the majority opinion in Korematsu v. United States (1944), which upheld the internment of Japanese Americans ordered by the president Franklin Roosevelt. During the mid-1960s, Black became slightly more conservative.[12] Black opposed the doctrine of substantive due process (the pre-1937 Supreme Court's interpretation of this concept made it impossible for the government to enact legislation that conservatives claimed interfered with the freedom of business owners),[4]: 107–108 and believed that there was no basis in the words of the Constitution for a right to privacy, voting against finding one in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965).[4]: 241–242 He also took conservative positions in cases such as Shapiro v. Thompson, Goldberg v. Kelly, Tinker v. Des Moines, and Cohen v. California where he distinguished between "pure speech" and "expressive conduct".
- ^ "Justices 1789 to Present". Washington, D.C.: Supreme Court of the United States. Retrieved February 15, 2022.
- ^ Suitts, Steve. "Hugo L. Black". Encyclopedia of Alabama. Archived from the original on March 1, 2015. Retrieved September 25, 2020.
- ^ Newman, Hugo Black, pp. 195, 209, 228.
- ^ a b c Ball, Howard. Hugo L. Black: Cold Steel Warrior. Oxford University Press. 1996. ISBN 0-19-507814-4
- ^ "The Digs: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Photo". The Digs: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Archived from the original on March 17, 2018. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
- ^ a b "I Quit Klan: Black's Defense". Chicago Tribune. October 2, 1937. Archived from the original on August 31, 2016. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
- ^ Eschner, Kat (February 27, 2017). "This Supreme Court Justice Was a KKK Member". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved October 16, 2024.
- ^ Henry J. Abraham, Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court (1992).
- ^ "List of Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court". Archived from the original on January 10, 2006. Retrieved April 29, 2008.
- ^ "Hugo L. Black". Oyez. Archived from the original on March 6, 2023.
- ^ Tribe, Laurence. American Constitutional Law. p. 1160.
Whether the Black-Rutledge version is accurate history has been disputed vigrously off the Court, as we shall momentarily see; what is indisputable is that, with remarkable consensus, later Courts accepted the perspective of these Justices as historical truth.
- ^ Cohen, Adam (2021). Supreme Inequality. Penguin. p. 19. ISBN 978-0735221529. Retrieved April 10, 2022.