Greenberg Remarks on The Crisis in American Justice Conference with Chief Justice Warren
Press Release
May 15, 1970

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Press Releases, Volume 6. Greenberg Remarks on The Crisis in American Justice Conference with Chief Justice Warren, 1970. 3268a31c-ba92-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/ce115295-a698-44d7-90a0-e45294f9694d/greenberg-remarks-on-the-crisis-in-american-justice-conference-with-chief-justice-warren. Accessed April 27, 2025.
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Remarks by JACK GREENBERG, Director-Counsel NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. THE CRISIS IN AMERICAN JUSTICE Americana Hotel, New York City May 15, 1970 We are here today to do honor to the Chief Justice who does us great honor by his presence. For me, personally, it is a novel experience to be standing on the same side of the lectern as the Chief, instead of facing him across it and commencing my address with "May it please the Court." I cannot help thinking about what it was like during that approximately decade and a half that the lawyers of the Legal Defense Fund regularly appeared before the supreme bench to plead some of the cases in which the court changed the face of these United States. The opinions of the Court and its jurisprudence and the politics and social movements relating to those opinions have consumed thousands of pages of newspaper reporting and, even now, historical interpretations. But so much of what came from the court can in microcosm be seen in the conduct of the hearings of the cases by Chief Justice Warren. During the questioning of counsel in which the Justices seek to elicit the facts and understand the arguments of both sides, he would frequently conclude a colloquy by looking a lawyer in the eye and asking, "Yes I understand your position, but is that fair?" One may argue, and there is no shortage of legal philosophers who have argued, that this inquiry is not sufficiently legalistic. But in the Supreme Court, which makes the supreme law of the land, one issue of overwhelming concern is whether legal rules comport with the sense of fairness of the times. This is no novel perception, having been pointed out by Justice Cardozo long ago. Many a lawyer wilted under the question "Is that fair." It took a particular bravado and considerable circumlocution for counsel to assert the fairness of a position in which he did not really believe. Recently I have been looking at the transcripts of some arguments before the Court and would like to share with you some sense of how the Chief extracted the moral essense of the legal questions before the Court. In the original School Segregation Cases - on the issue of how to implement the court order - he interrogated counsel for the State of South Carolina as follows: THE CHIEF JUSTICE: But you are not willing to say here that there would be an honest attempt to conform to this decree, if we did leave it to the district court? MR. ROGERS: No, I am not. Let us get the word "honest" out of there. THE CHIEF JUSTICE: No, leave it in. MR. ROGERS: No, because I would have to tell you right now we would not conform--we would not send our white children to the Negro schools. One can imagine how the court was impressed with arguments about "good faith" after retorts of that sort. And only two years ago, in the 'freedom of choice' cases, he referred to the same theme of "honesty." MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN: Isn't the experience of three years in that county, where there never has been a white child go to a Negro school, isn't that some indication that it was designed for the purpose of having a booby trap for them, that they couldn't didn't dare to go over? MR. GRAY: . . . [I]£ integrated education is what the colored plaintiff wants, I can provide it for him this morning, if he is in the room. He need only sign that form and check the New Kent School, and he will have a fully integrated education. MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN: When you say to us that there are no community attitudes that pervade that county, which would militate against the Negro child saying that he wanted to go to the white school, can you say that to us honestly? Politicians may tell tall tales, but there is no doubt that the Justices knew what the score was. Of course, we all know, and the Chief Justice will be the first to say, that decisions of the Warren Court were the decisions of a court consisting of nine justices. But during his tenure, while the identities of his associates changed somewhat from time to time, the direction of that court remained the same. And the Chief's views on questions of human liberty were a constant which characterized the Court's decisions. Our dear friend and frequent collaborator at the Legal Defense Fund, Professor Charles Black of Yale, has recently given a series of lectures on the Warren Court, which better than anything else sums up its achievement. I would like to read some excerpts from those lectures: There is only one thing I would say confidently, now, about the Warren Court. It is the only Court so far in American history which has so much as a chance of being one day thought as great as the Marshall Court, for it is the only Court that has made an assertion as large as the Marshall Court made. Marshall took a set of disconnected texts and read them together in the light of an overall vision of nationhood. The Warren Court .. . has insisted that these guarantees, readable in them- selves, in their radiations, and in their interstices, are to be looked on as forming a total scheme of citizenship. The Warren Court . . . perceived in these guarantees a pervading systemic equity, and equity of respect for the citizen, and thus set in full motion a way of looking at them which can make of their totality a plan adequate in shape and size, to confront Marshall's plan of nationhood. * * * I think it plain that we will not be or remain a nation unless we plant ourselves on the moral ground to which the Warren Court has given its outlines . . . We need this moral basis of citizenship -- common, growing citizenship -- as we need cleaner water and air. The decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which is in my view the Court's largest contribution to that vision of citizenship, was, of course, handed down in response to cases brought by the Legal Defense Fund. We have since then devoted ourselves to implementing its vision in many ways, acting to extend it to housing, employment and public accommodations to all citizens and to see that all are treated alike without regard to race or poverty. Now the Legal Defense Fund is undertaking a new and much needed effort, and that is to extend, particularly in the South, the number of Negro lawyers who are trained in civil rights, so that the theoretical victories can be made into pervasive reality. Today only 1% of the lawyers and law students in the United States are Negro. There is only one black lawyer for every 7,000 black Americans and in the South and Southwest the ratio is one to 37,000. The comparable national figure for white persons is one to every 637. We are undertaking a program which over the next 5 years will add enough black lawyers to those who normally would be expected to graduate from law school to double the number of black lawyers in the nation and more than double the number in the South, i.e. 1500 law school scholarships. Of these we will select more than 200 to be interns in our offices or the offices of our cooperating attorneys and develop special expertise in civil rights so valuable, particularly in this day when the federal government is cutting back on its civil rights enforcement. Moreover, we plan to increase the number of our Lawyers Training Institutes available to still other members of the Bar to enhance the capacity of the private civil rights sector. We plan to do this while maintaining our current litigation program. And that means a 60% increase in budget or more than $16 million to be spent over the next three years. These are difficult enough times for those of us who believe in human rights. Bishop Moore at the opening of this session mentioned the tragic death of Walter Reuther. We thought that some small recognition of his steady and unfailing dedication might be commemorated by naming one of the law school scholarships after him and this we intend to do. We had wondered, since this is a luncheon in honor of the Chief Justice, whether to present him with a plaque or a scroll or any of the conventional artifacts ordinarily handed out on such occasions. But we concluded that probably he had a closet full of them and another would make no real difference beyond the expression of our esteem and love. We do hope, however, that he takes some satisfaction in the naming of the law school scholarship after Walter Reuther his devoted friend and admirer whom he admired so profoundly. And now, I present to you Mr. Chief Justice Earl Warren.