Americans interested in their nation’s history and laws should know about Judge Spottswood W. Robinson. He was a key member of the legal team that won the Brown v. Board of Education case in the Supreme Court which outlawed segregation in public schools. He was a judge on the second highest court in the nation ,the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit , for thirty years . Finally, he was a role model for those of us privileged to work with him.( I clerked for him in 1978-79).
In my view there’s much too little written or known about Judge Robinson. He was born in Virginia in 1916. He was a very bright student and graduated from high school at the age of 15 and Howard Law School at the age of 22. While in Law School he wrote a paper that developed a theory that outlawed restrictive property covenants. The Supreme Court accepted his argument several years later in the case of Shelley v. Kramer. Judge Robinson graduated from Howard Law School with the highest grade point average in the history of the Law School. Upon graduation he taught for eight years at the Law School. He joined with his friend Oliver Hill to establish a legal practice in Richmond. He was the southeast regional counsel for the NAACP and in that capacity filed what were called equalization cases to require communities throughout the state of Virginia to provide equal resources necessary to equalize conditions in their public schools.
Attorney Robinson gathered judgments entitling his clients’ schools to 50 million dollars, but in 1950 the NAACP leadership decided to stop filing equalization cases and instead seek a judgment that segregation is inherently unequal. He often visited students and their parents to inquire if they wished to join the lawsuits for better schools, recognizing it could cause a parent to lose a job or have a bank loan called. He found the students and their parents anxious to participate.
The NAACP Legal Defence Fund led by Thurgood Marshall asked Robinson to become their expert on the history of the drafting and ratification of the 14th Amendment. When the Brown case came before the Supreme Court, Judge Robinson’s work paid off. His opposing counsel Justin Moore argued that the Virginia Legislature required school segregation simply to keep the peace between the races. Robinson got up and pulled out the records of the 1901 Convention that had drafted the Virginia Constitution. , which required segregation. Only an indefatigable perfectionist would have examined the 1901 Convention. The reason for the segregation imposed by Virginia was quite simple; said Robinson.He then quoted to the Court from the supporters of the Virginia segregation mandate,” the purpose was to limit the educational opportunities of the Negro and place him in the position where he could not obtain opportunities and benefits of a public education equal to those of white students.” This showed that the intent behind the segregation of public schools was not benign, but intended to create unequal education of blacks and whites. Robinson’s scholarship had paid off.
While Robinson would become famous for his role in civil rights cases, his practice was much broader. He helped defend the Martinsville Seven, a group of African American men accused of sexually assaulting a women. . Despite the defense’s best efforts, the men were executed.
Robinson , the civil rights attorney, traveled throughout Virginia . He always had to pack a lunch as most Virginia restaurants then would not serve blacks .
In 1962 Robinson became one of the first black men appointed to the federal bench, initially by President Kennedy. Later he was elevated to the D.C. Circuit by President Johnson. Robinson’s elevation to the Court of Appeals was held up by the Virginia senators until the White House hit on a solution. Robinson was also a resident of Washington, D.C. and served as Dean at Howard University. D.C. had no senators to block him.
As a judge on the country’s second highest court for 30 years, he published over 300 opinions. They are invariably evenhanded and precise. His opinions in certain areas were quite groundbreaking. He wrote the seminal opinion on informed consent in medical malpractice cases. He wrote a prescient opinion in a sexual harassment case, Barnes v. Costle, deciding that sexual harassment was a form of sex discrimination. It was ten years later that the Supreme Court adopted Judge Robinson’s views on this issue. Finally, Judge Robinson was the Chief Judge of the D.C. Circuit, the first black chief judge in that court. His successor as chief judge, Harry Edwards said Robinson redesigned the role of chief.
As we enter into Black History Month, we should recall the words of Chief Judge Harry Edwards at Judge Robinson’s memorial service: “It is too bad that more young people today do not know the story of Spottswood Robinson. Many enjoy the fruits of his seminal work, but they do not really understand the legacy. Spotts grew up as a part of a generation whose children were the grandchildren of slaves. They were told over and over again, by parents, grandparents, and teachers, that they had to excel-indeed, that they had to be superior in all that they did-in order to overcome racial bigotry. Spotts learned his lessons well: He did not merely strive to get good grades; he aimed to get nothing but A’s. He did not merely hope to win; he prepared to win. When he finished a project, he did not merely say, ‘I have done the best I can’; he announced, not immodestly, ‘it cannot be done better.’ He did not whine about his situation in life; he simply worked to make things better for himself and others. He did not seek or accept anything that he had not earned. And he was utterly selfless, never seeking fame or fortune for his many brilliant deeds on behalf of others.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg served with Judge Robinson on the D.C. Circuit for several years. She spoke of his hard work late into the night and his contributions to the development of the law, but she also said Judge Robinson was a gentle human being who poured everything into doing his best. She told an anecdote about the Brown case. When Robinson was working on his brief, “in that pre-word processing time, Spotts would go over each line of each page, incessantly making changes. Frustrated, the secretary complained, ‘if I have to do this one more time . . . .’ An older secretary admonished: We are helping to make history here, tonight. If Mr. Robinson tells you to do that 50 times, you type it.'”
The same perfectionist attitude led to deeply researched opinions. He was a scholar and lawyers loved to find an opinion by him in an area of interest because he was so complete in his research.
Judge Robinson was convinced that many cases had a legally correct answer and he was bound to find it, regardless of his personal preferences. He believed that his personal preferences could not override a legally right result.
More important, he believed there was a right way to live and to treat others. He thought that civil rights was basically a struggle to treat everyone right. As my fellow Robinson law clerk Stephen Carter put it, “The civil rights struggle, in other words, was not simply a matter of getting white southerners to stop segregating black southerners, although that was clearly the greatest manifestation of injustice at the time. The more basic struggle was the struggle to persuade all of us not only to obey the law, not only to do what was right, but to live our lives in a way that showed the deepest respect for others.”
The Judge always treated people as equals and with respect. At times when we had worked late and gathered up material to take home with us, he would encounter a security guard or custodial worker or library shelver, and the Judge would invariably stop for a 5 or 10 minute chat with the person. He knew their names and called them Mr., Mrs. or Miss. Courtesy and respect for others was natural to him. Often courthouse employees would come to him for advice.
He was my mentor in the law and life. He passed in 1998. His legacy is immense–from public desegregated schools to freedom to live in any part of town you like or your ability to mount a federal lawsuit if you are sexually harrassed. We shall not see his like again.
The Owl of Minerva 