Henry Billings Brown
Henry Billings Brown | |
---|---|
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States | |
In office January 5, 1891 – May 28, 1906[1] | |
Nominated by | Benjamin Harrison |
Preceded by | Samuel Freeman Miller |
Succeeded by | William Henry Moody |
Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan | |
In office March 19, 1875 – December 29, 1890 | |
Nominated by | Ulysses S. Grant |
Preceded by | John W. Longyear |
Succeeded by | Henry Harrison Swan |
Personal details | |
Born | Lee, Massachusetts, U.S. | March 2, 1836
Died | September 4, 1913 (aged 77) Bronxville, New York, U.S. |
Political party | Republican |
Spouses | Caroline Pitts
(m. 1864; died 1901)Josephine Tyler (m. 1904) |
Education | Yale University (BA) Harvard University |
Signature | |
Henry Billings Brown (March 2, 1836 – September 4, 1913) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1891 to 1906.
Although a respected lawyer and U.S. District Judge before ascending to the high court, Brown is harshly criticized for writing the majority opinion in
Early career
Family and education
Brown was born in
Legal activities in Detroit
Admitted to the Michigan Bar in 1860, Brown's early law practice was in Detroit, Michigan, where he specialized in admiralty law as it applied to shipping on the Great Lakes. In addition to his private law practice, at times between 1861 and 1868 Brown served as Deputy U.S. Marshal, Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, and to fill an opening was appointed judge of the Wayne County Circuit Court in Detroit, although he only served briefly in that position and lost an election for a full term.[6] He then became a partner specializing in admiralty law in the firm of Newberry, Pond & Brown, and practiced there for seven years. In 1872 Brown failed in an attempt to win the Republican nomination for a congressional seat.[7]
Personal life
In 1864, Brown married Caroline Pitts, the daughter of a wealthy Michigan lumber merchant. They had no children. He did not serve in the Union Army during the Civil War, but like many well-to-do men instead hired a substitute soldier to take his place.
Brown kept diaries from his college days until his appointment as a federal judge in 1875. Now held in the Burton Historical Collection of the
Federal judicial service
District court service
Appointment
The death of Brown's father-in-law left Brown and his wife financially independent, so he was willing to accept the relatively low salary of a
Publishing and teaching
Brown edited a collection of rulings and orders in important admiralty cases from inland waters,[8] and later compiled a case book on admiralty law for lectures at Georgetown University.[9] He also taught admiralty law classes at the University of Michigan Law School from 1860 to 1875, and medical jurisprudence at the Detroit Medical College (now the medical school of Wayne State University) from 1868 to 1871.[10] Brown received honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan in 1887,[11] and from Yale University in 1891.[12]
Supreme Court
Appointment
Brown was nominated by President
Jurisprudence
As a jurist, Brown was generally against government intervention in business, and joined the majority opinion in Lochner v. New York (1905) striking down a limitation on maximum working hours. He did, however, support the federal income tax in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895), and wrote for the Court in Holden v. Hardy (1898), upholding a Utah law restricting male miners to an eight-hour day.
Plessy v. Ferguson
Brown is best known, and widely criticized, for the 1896 decision in
We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. The argument necessarily assumes ... that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured to the negro except by an enforced commingling of the two races. We cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other's merits, and a voluntary consent of individuals. (From Brown's majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 551 (1896))
Insular Cases
Justice Brown authored the Court's 1901 opinions in DeLima v. Bidwell and Downes v. Bidwell, two of the Insular Cases, considering the status of territories acquired by the U.S. in the Spanish–American War of 1898.
Hale v. Henkel
Brown expounded for the majority the powers accorded to the grand jury in Hale v. Henkel, a 1906 case where the defendant—a tobacco company executive—refused to testify to the grand jury on several grounds in a case based upon the Sherman Antitrust Act. This opinion, said to be among his best, was rendered March 12, 1906, only 10 weeks before his retirement.
Personal life in Washington, D.C.
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House of Justice Henry Billings Brown in Washington, D.C.
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Justice Brown's residence around 1895
In 1891 he paid $25,000 (equivalent to $848,000 in 2023) to the
Brown's wife Caroline died in 1901. Three years later, Brown married a close friend of hers, the widow Josephine E. Tyler, who survived him.
Retirement
Near the end of his years on the Court, Brown largely lost his eyesight. He retired from the Court on May 28, 1906, at the age of 70.
Women's suffrage
In April 1910, retired Justice Brown presented a talk to The Ladies' Congressional Club of Washington, D.C., entitled "Woman Suffrage". In it he advocated against extending the vote to women, arguing that no persons, male or female, have a natural right to the vote, and that for a litany of reasons women should not have the legal ability to participate in elections. From the perspective of the 21st century, the talk is full of risible assertions and clichés about the role of women in society.[16]
Death
Brown died of heart disease on September 4, 1913, at a hotel in Bronxville, New York. He is buried next to his first wife in Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit.
Legacy
Decisions concerning minority groups
Despite Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown as a judge did not invariably vote against the interests of minority litigants. For example, in
Abilities
Brown, a privileged son of the Yankee merchant class, was a reflexive social elitist whose opinions of women, African‐Americans, Jews, and immigrants now seem odious, even if they were unexceptional for their time. Brown exalted, as he once wrote, 'that respect for the law inherent in the Anglo‐Saxon race'. Although he was widely praised as a fair and honest judge, Plessy has irrevocably dimmed his otherwise creditable career. Though some may argue that Brown bears personal guilt for the racial evils Plessy helped make possible, others respond that Brown was a man of his day, noting that the decades of de jure discrimination that came after Plessy merely reflected the zeitgeist.[19]
Brown has been remembered as "a capable and solid, if unimaginative, legal technician."[20]
One of his friends offered the faint praise that Brown's life "shows how a man without perhaps extraordinary abilities may attain and honour the highest judicial position by industry, by good character, pleasant manners and some aid from fortune".
Elena Kagan confirmation hearing
Perhaps the public nadir of Brown's legacy occurred during the 2010
Senator GRAHAM. And do you know — are you familiar with Justice Henry Billings Brown?
Ms. KAGAN. I feel as though I should be, but I'm going to say no.
Senator GRAHAM. Well, you don't want him to be your hero, trust me.
Absence of memorials
A Liberty ship named after him, the Henry B. Brown (hull number 938),[24] was launched in 1943 and scrapped in 1965.
Apart from a sepulchral monument in a Detroit cemetery, there are no known statues, named schools or buildings or institutions, or any other memorials to Brown. There has been no book-length biography published about him.
Brown's non-judicial bibliography
- Cases on the Law of Admiralty. St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishing Co., 1896.
- The Character and Services of James Valentine Campbell, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the States of Michigan. Delivered at the request of the Detroit Bar Association, 1890.
- The Dissenting Opinions of Mr. Justice Daniel. 24 Am. L. Rev. 869 (1887).
- The Dissenting Opinions of Mr. Justice Harlan. 46 Am. L. Rev. 321 (1912).
- The Distribution of Property, in Report of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association, 213 (1893).
- Federal Law and Federal Courts. 11 Library Am. L. & Practice 323 (1912).
- International Courts. 20 Yale L.J.1 (1910).
- Judicial Independence, in Report of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association, 265 (1889).
- Judicial Treatment of Criminal Offenders. 17 Chicago Legal News 171 (1910).
- Jurisdiction of the Admiralty in Cases of Tort. 9 Columbia L. Rev. 1 (1909).
- Lake Erie Piracy Case. 21 Green Bag 143 (1909).
- Law and Procedure in Divorce. 44 Am. L. Rev. 321 (1910).
- Liberty of the Press. 23 Proc. N.Y. St. Bar Ass'n 130 (1900).
- The New Federal Judicial Code, in Report of the Thirty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association, 339 (1911).
- Proposed International Prize Court. 2 Am. J. Int. L. 476 (1908).
- Reports of Admiralty and Revenue Cases Argued and Determined in the Circuit and District Courts of the United States, for the Western Lake and River Districts. New York: Baker, Voorhies & Co., 1876.
- The Status of the Automobile. 17 Yale L.J. 223 (1908).
- The Twentieth Century. An address delivered before the graduating classes at the seventy-first anniversary of Yale Law School, on June 24th, 1895. New Haven: Hoggson & Robinson (1895).
- Woman Suffrage; a paper read by ex-Justice Brown ... before the Ladies Congressional Club of Washington D.C. Boston: Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women (1910).
See also
- List of justices of the Supreme Court of the United States
- List of United States Supreme Court justices by time in office
- List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 4)
- List of United States Supreme Court cases by the Fuller Court
Notes
- ^ It should be remembered that Justice John Marshall Harlan, the dissenter in Plessy, also dissented in Wong Kim Ark and voted against citizenship for the Chinese-American litigant. This is consistent with Harlan's comments in his Plessy dissent opining that "There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States. Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country. I allude to the Chinese race." Neither Brown nor Harlan was absolutely consistent in decisions regarding minority groups.
References
- ^ a b "Justices 1789 to Present". Washington, D.C.: Supreme Court of the United States. Retrieved February 14, 2022.
- ^ Sutherland Jr., Arthur E. (July 1954). "Segregation and the Supreme Court". The Atlantic Monthly.
- ^ Brown, Henry Billings; Kent, Charles Artemas (1915). Memoir of Henry Billings Brown, Late Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States: Consisting of an Autobiographical Sketch. p. 1. Retrieved March 19, 2024.
- ^ "Memoir of Henry Billings Brown" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on January 11, 2019. Retrieved January 10, 2019.
- ^ "Memoir of Henry Billings Brown" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on January 11, 2019. Retrieved January 10, 2019.
- ^ "Biography, Henry Billings Brown". Federal Judicial Center. December 11, 2009. Archived from the original on March 3, 2013. Retrieved December 31, 2012.
- ^ "Memoir of Henry Billings Brown" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on January 11, 2019. Retrieved January 10, 2019.
- ^ Brown, Henry Billings (1876). Reports of admiralty and revenue cases argued and determined in the circuit and district courts of the United States for the western lake and river districts [1856-1875]. New York: Baker, Voorhis & Co.
- ISBN 978-1240089277.
- ^ "Federal Judicial Center: Henry Billings Brown". December 11, 2009. Archived from the original on March 3, 2013. Retrieved December 31, 2012.
- ^ "See the .pdf list of Honorary Degree Recipients linked at this webpage: History of the Honorary Degree at the University of Michigan". president.umich.edu. Retrieved December 29, 2021.
- ^ "Honorary Degrees since 1702". secretary.yale.edu. Retrieved December 29, 2021.
- ISBN 9780199967797.
- ^ McMillion, Barry J. (January 28, 2022). Supreme Court Nominations, 1789 to 2020: Actions by the Senate, the Judiciary Committee, and the President (PDF) (Report). Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service. Retrieved February 14, 2022.
- ^ "Memoir of Henry Billings Brown (Ambitions)" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on January 11, 2019. Retrieved January 10, 2019.
- ^ [1] Brown, Henry Billings, Woman Suffrage. Boston: The Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women (April 1910).
- ^ "Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228 (1896)". Archived from the original on January 11, 2019. Retrieved January 10, 2019.
- ^ "Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475 (1903)". justia.com. Retrieved March 9, 2022.
- ISBN 978-0195176612).
- ^ "Henry Billings Brown" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on June 9, 2014. Retrieved December 31, 2012.
- ^ "Memoir of Henry Billings Brown (Praise)" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on January 11, 2019. Retrieved January 10, 2019.
- ^ "Henry B. Brown, Noted Jurist, Dies", New York Times, September 5, 1913, p. 9.
- ^ U.S. Government Printing Office. THE NOMINATION OF ELENA KAGAN TO BE AN ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES; HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY UNITED STATES SENATE; ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION; JUNE 28–30 and JULY 1, 2010; Serial No. J–111–98, p. 261 (2010).
- ^ "Liberty Ships built by the United States Maritime Commission in World War II". Archived from the original on May 9, 2008. Retrieved December 18, 2018.
Further reading
- ISBN 978-0195176612)
- Robert J. Glennon Jr., Justice Henry Billings Brown: Values in Tension, University of Colorado Law Review 44 (1973): 553–604
- Henry Billings Brown at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
- Memoir of Henry Billings Brown, by Charles A. Kent of the Detroit Bar, 1915 (ISBN 978-1115062916)