[y66]

From The Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of the first African-American to serve as a Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall, born in Baltimore, Maryland (1908). His mother was an elementary school teacher and his father was a steward at an all-white yacht club on the Chesapeake Bay.

He was a troublemaker in school, and as punishment for his misbehavior was often sent down to the school basement to memorize the Constitution. But by the time he graduated, he was an honor student. He originally considered becoming a dentist, but later said, "My father turned me into a lawyer without ever telling me what he wanted me to be. ... He taught me how to argue, challenged my logic on every point, even if we were discussing the weather."

He applied to the University of Maryland Law School, but he was rejected on the basis of race, so he enrolled at Howard University instead. The first thing he did, upon graduation was use his law degree to sue the University of Maryland for racial discrimination, and he almost couldn't believe it when he won. Thanks to his efforts, the University of Maryland Law School admitted its first black student in 1935. It was the first time that a black student had ever been admitted to any state law school south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Marshall became the legal director of the NAACP, and of the 32 cases he argued for that organization, he won 29. His biggest case was the landmark Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, challenging the long-standing precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson, which had established that public institutions could be segregated but still equal. During the arguments, Marshall was asked by Justice Felix Frankfurter what he meant by the word "equal." Marshall replied, "Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time, and in the same place."

The Supreme Court actually asked him to argue the case a second time, and he was shocked when the court ultimately agreed with him in a unanimous opinion. He later said, "I was delirious. What a victory! I thought I was the smartest lawyer in the entire world."

The decision took decades to be fully implemented, but Marshall would go down in history as the man responsible for dismantling the legality of segregation in America. He went on to serve as an appeals court judge under Kennedy, and Johnson appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1967.

[Winstonm]

Kennedy and Johnson gave us Thurgood Marshall.
Bush and Cheney gave us Addington and Yoo.

We seem to have lost a little in the swap.

[blackshoe]

Cheney has not been, is not now, and is not likely ever to be, President of the United States. And it's the President who makes Supreme Court appointments.

Neither Addington nor Yoo has been appointed to the Supreme Court, nor is either likely to be, no matter who becomes President.

Bush appointed John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the SC. Compare them to Thurgood Marshall (and no, I don't think either of them will come out ahead in that).