Thurgood Marshall, Sr. Associate Justice of the United State Supreme Court (1967-1991)

      Thurgood Marshall, Sr. was sworn into office as the first African-American associate justice of the United States Supreme Court on October 2, 1967. His appointment by President Lyndon B. Johnson was simultaneously and ostensibly both a historic and a defining moment for America.

Justice Marshall’s appointment came at a pivotal time in American history, following his two-year appointment by President John F. Kennedy as United States Solicitor General (1965-1967). The nation was also grappling with several national issues that had bitterly divided Americans such as civil rights, the Vietnam War, desegregation of public schools, integration, race relations, abortion and the growing competitiveness between conservative views and liberal views and interestingly, many of those issues would come before the High Court during Justice Marshall’s 24-year term of service.

Yet, the state of the nation in 1967 was ideal for the new associate justice, a man who had spent 34 years of his life fighting for the civil rights of black Americans and the poor primarily but whose legal victories ultimately advanced the rights of all Americans. Prior to his appointment as an associate justice, Justice Marshall had won a stunning 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court, distinguishing himself as an advocate of the Court.

Justice Marshall’s 24 years on the Supreme Court continued his tireless fight for civil rights and his unyielding vision of the Constitution fulfilling its promise of equality for all Americans. His decisions were sometimes met with the intense opposition of his peers on many issues of national prominence such as the death penalty, abortion, desegregation and laws affecting the rights of the poor. However, he never compromised the values, beliefs and convictions that had guided his success as a lawyer who was often credited as being a leading architect of the civil rights movement.

The First Years

During his first years on the High Court, Justice Marshall signed very few dissents as he generally voted with the liberal majority of justices who were on the Court at that time. Some the more notable cases that the justices heard included:

• Mempa v. Rhay in 1967, in which Justice Marshall wrote his first opinion in a unanimous decision that granted defendants the right to an attorney during every stage of the criminal process. He particularly expressed his belief this right was important to the poor.
  
• Stanley v. Georgia in 1969, which held that the private possession of pornography could not be subject to prosecution.
  
• Benton v. Maryland in 1969, which gave defendants protection against double jeopardy in state courts.
  
• Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg in 1970, in which Justice Marshall persuaded his colleagues to unanimously confirm the use of busing to integrate public schools, an issue that was close to his heart in light of his landmark case Brown v. Board of Education.

The 1970s: A Time of Change

1970 ushered in a new era of conservatism as the Court became skewed with more conservative justices. By 1972, Justice Marshall was the only remaining appointee of President Johnson and the 1970s marked the beginning of his legal battles against conservatives that followed him throughout his remaining years on the Court. Two landmark cases in which his personal convictions led him to fight vigorously for what he believed was right involved abortion and the death penalty:

• Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton in 1971 were landmark cases revolving around Texas and Georgia statutes restricting abortions. The justices were divided on the issue as well and Justice Marshall was openly aggressive in trying to the shape the Court’s opinion. In the end, he prevailed and the controversial ruling allowed abortion until such time that the fetus had viability outside the mother’s body.
• Furman v. Georgia in 1972 prompted Justice Marshall to become the leader of the justices who were opposed to the death penalty. They won a difficult 5-4 vote outlawing capital punishment and marking the beginning of the justice’s long fight on the Court against the death penalty, which he vehemently opposed. He argued that the death penalty was applied inconsistently to different defendants and often was only applied to minorities and the indigent.

Over the years, as more conservative justices were appointed to the High Court, justices such as Justice Marshall and his ally Justice William Brennan, slowly became the minority. This sparked the beginning of Justice Marshall’s foray into writing a number of dissents, a practice that he would continue until his retirement in 1991 and also resulted in others in the judicial system to dub him “The Great Dissenter.” Two of his early and best known dissenting opinions occurred in two cases that shared similarities with Brown v. Board of Education.

In the 1973 case San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez, the majority cast a 5-4 vote that the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection was not violated by the property tax system used by Texas and most other states to finance public education. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Marshall argued that the right to an education should be regarded as a fundamental constitutional right and when state policies have the effect of discriminating on the basis of wealth, the policies should be subject to judicial scrutiny.

In 1974, black parents sued after the Detroit courts would not approve their request that the black urban school district and the white suburban school districts be merged to promote integration. After the parents won in the lower courts and appeals court, the Supreme Court reversed the rulings. Justice Marshall wrote an extremely strong dissenting opinion citing Brown v. Board of Education.

Justice Marshall’s work during the mid 1970s centered on one issue that he viewed as having among the greatest implications for society: the death penalty. When the High Court heard another death penalty case, there was a 7-2 vote to reinstate capital punishment in 1976, bitterly disappointing him.

Two days after reading his dissent to the majority opinion on the death penalty, Justice Marshall suffered his first heart attack while at home in his Fairfax County, Virginia. Over the next three days, he suffered two more heart attacks while hospitalized, marking the beginning his 15-year struggle with maintaining the rigors of serving on the conservative majority Supreme Court amid his deteriorating health.

Over the next five years, Justice Marshall faced tremendous pressure as new cases that went to the heart of his lifelong efforts on civil rights erupted and came before the Court, including a new cases on abortion, affirmative action and contracts for minority businesses.

Justice Marshall wrote a particularly impassioned dissent following the Court’s decision in the critical 1997 Bakke case. The case involved a young white man, Allan Bakke, who sued the University of California at Davis. Bakke asserted that the university had violated his Fourteenth Amendment rights when 16 minority students with lower grades than he had been admitted to the medical school, while he had been denied. The case was long and particularly divisive, ending a 5-4 majority voting against the university, which was a great disappointment to Justice Marshall.

1980-1991: Forging Ahead

Justice Marshall, though battling failing health and battling conservatives on the Court, presented powerfully persuasive arguments on the first major race relations case of the 1980s, which involved the constitutionality of a federal government plan to set aside 10 percent of its contracts for minority businesses. He cited the history of government-approved racial discrimination and the need for the government to remedy it. The Court voted 6-3 in support of Justice Marshall’s arguments, giving him a needed victory.

Throughout the 1980s, Justice Marshall continued to argue strategically and vigorously in cases that asserted a more expansive focus on civil rights in areas such as the homeless, the indigent and prisoners with mental problems. He saw some major victories such as two cases involving the death penalty for mentally ill inmates being overturned. In those cases in which his arguments did not prevail, Justice Marshall continued his track record of strongly worded dissents.

He wrote dissents in every death penalty case and every case in which black defendants charged that prosecutors used race as a basis for not allowing black jurors. A 1986 case gave Justice Marshall a tremendously satisfying victory when in a 7-2 ruling, the justices held that black jurors could not be excluded simply because the defendant was also black.

By 1990, amid failing health and as the sole justice appointed by a Democratic president, Justice Marshall continued writing strongly-worded dissents in response to the Court’s notably regressive stand on civil rights cases.

In June 1991, he officially announced its retirement but continued to serve the law until his health prevented him from leaving his home.

He died of heart failure at Bethesda Medical Center at age 84 on Sunday, January 24, 1993.

Thurgood Marshall had given his life to the crusade for civil rights and justice for all, leaving an indelible imprint on history and on the lives of future generations of Americans.