%1 http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/ en Neil Gorsuch http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/neil-gorsuch <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Neil Gorsuch</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2020-09-14T16:22:27-06:00" title="Monday, September 14, 2020 - 16:22" class="datetime">Mon, 09/14/2020 - 16:22</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/neil-gorsuch" data-a2a-title="Neil Gorsuch"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fneil-gorsuch&amp;title=Neil%20Gorsuch"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>Neil Gorsuch (1967–) is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Born in <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver"><strong>D</strong></a><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver"><strong>enver</strong></a> to a prominent legal and political family, he moved as a teenager to Washington, DC, where his mother, <strong>Anne Gorsuch</strong>, served in the administration of President Ronald Reagan. His education and early legal career kept him largely on the East Coast until 2006, when President George W. Bush named him to the <strong>US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit</strong>, which sits in Denver.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 2017 he became Colorado’s second-ever Supreme Court justice (after <strong>Byron White</strong>) when he was nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate. The most significant opinion of his career so far has come in <em>Bostock v. Clayton County</em> (2020), which held that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and transgender status in the workplace.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Early Life</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Neil McGill Gorsuch was born in Denver on August 29, 1967, to Anne and David Gorsuch. His parents had both graduated from the <strong>University of Colorado</strong> Law School in 1964. His paternal grandfather, John Gorsuch, was a prominent Denver lawyer, and his father joined the family firm and became president of the Denver Kiwanis Club. His mother was elected to the <strong>Colorado General Assembly</strong> in the 1970s, where she was a populist firebrand and member of the “House Crazies” who worked for tax cuts and states’ rights and against federal environmental policies.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The Gorsuch family moved to Washington, DC, in 1981, when President Ronald Reagan named Anne Gorsuch the first female head of the <strong>Environmental Protection Agency</strong>. After slashing the agency’s budget and staff, she resigned two years later owing to a scandal (“Sewergate”) involving mismanagement of the Superfund environmental clean-up program. Neil finished out high school at Georgetown Preparatory School in nearby North Bethesda, Maryland. He then attended Columbia University, where he had a column in the <em>Columbia Daily Spectator</em> and founded the conservative<em> Federalist Paper</em>. After graduating in 1988 with a degree in political science, he went on to Harvard Law School, where he was in the class of 1991 with Barack Obama.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Legal Career</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Gorsuch’s abilities and ambitions showed clearly in his string of postgraduate activities. In 1991–92 he clerked for conservative Judge David B. Sentelle on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. After winning a prestigious Marshall Scholarship to study in the United Kingdom, he spent the next academic year at Oxford University, where he was advised by the natural law scholar John Finnis. Returning to the United States in 1993, he clerked for a year at the Supreme Court for fellow Coloradan Byron White, who had recently retired, and for Anthony Kennedy.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1995 Gorsuch went into private practice at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans &amp; Fiegel in Washington, DC. During his time at the firm, he regularly represented <strong>Philip Anschutz</strong>, whose sprawling business empire made him the richest man in Colorado.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In the early 2000s, Gorsuch took a detour from his lucrative partnership to complete his doctorate at Oxford, finishing in 2004. His dissertation became the basis for his first book, <em>The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia</em> (2006). Gorsuch argued “for retaining existing law [banning the practices] on the basis that human life is fundamentally and inherently valuable, and that the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>After completing his doctorate, in 2005 Gorsuch joined the Department of Justice as principal deputy to the associate attorney general and then acting associate attorney general. In May 2006, President George W. Bush nominated him to the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was confirmed in July and returned to the Denver area, where he served for about a decade as a circuit-court judge. Starting in 2008, he also taught classes in ethics and antitrust law at the University of Colorado Law School, where he was a visiting professor.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Gorsuch and his wife, Louise, whom he met at Oxford, have two daughters, Emma and Belinda. During his time on the Tenth Circuit, his family lived on a horse property in <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/boulder-county"><strong>Boulder County</strong></a>, where they also raised chickens and goats. Gorsuch enjoys hunting, fishing, and skiing; he was on the slopes in early February 2016 when he learned of Supreme Court associate justice Antonin Scalia’s death.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Supreme Court</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>On January 31, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Gorsuch to the Supreme Court to replace Scalia. Although Gorsuch himself was not an especially contentious nominee, the circumstances surrounding his nomination made it politically polarizing. At the time of Scalia’s death, President Barack Obama, then in his last year in office, had attempted to name Merrick Garland, a well-regarded moderate judge, to the seat. In an unprecedented move, Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader in charge of confirmations, refused to give Garland a hearing, preferring to wait and hope for a Republican victory in the presidential election that fall. Democrats were incensed about the maneuver, which left the Court shorthanded and injected a bitter dose of partisanship into a theoretically nonpartisan institution, and as a result, many opposed Gorsuch’s nomination on those grounds alone.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Gorsuch appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 2017 and followed the recent standard practice whereby nominees provide only vague assertions about their neutral legal principles instead of specific answers on issues. After his hearing, Democrats filibustered his confirmation, blocking it from proceeding unless sixty senators agreed to cut off debate. In response, Republicans deployed the so-called nuclear option of doing away with the traditional sixty-vote threshold to end debate. That done, Gorsuch was confirmed on April 7 by a 54–45 vote (only three Democrats voting in favor) and was sworn in three days later.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>At age forty-nine, Gorsuch became the 113th justice in the history of the Supreme Court. On a Court packed with Easterners who attended Ivy League schools, his western heritage added a new perspective and a first-person knowledge of distinctive western issues, which was expected to come into play in cases involving public lands and American Indians. Long a member of a liberal Episcopalian church in <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/boulder"><strong>Boulder</strong></a>, Gorsuch also added a bit of religious diversity by becoming the current Court’s only Protestant member.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Despite his prior reputation for mild-mannered, even courteous, dissents, Gorsuch quickly made a name for himself on the Court thanks to the civics lessons he routinely delivered to his fellow justices during oral arguments and in written opinions. “If a statute needs repair, there is a constitutionally prescribed way to do it,” he lectured in an early dissent. “It’s called legislation.” During his first year on the Court, he developed an antagonistic relationship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and was reportedly engaged in feuds with Chief Justice John Roberts and Elena Kagan, who saw Gorsuch’s flashy, contentious style as a threat to institutional stability and consensus. Some commentators thought Gorsuch was positioning himself as the new leader of the Court’s conservative wing.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Legal Views and Notable Opinions</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Like many conservative judges since the 1980s, Gorsuch believes in originalism, a doctrine of Constitutional interpretation that attempts to apply the original intentions of the framers. He has been sharply critical of what he sees as liberal attempts to use litigation to stretch laws to their liking. “American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom,” he wrote in <em>National Review</em> in 2005, “relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their social agenda.”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Gorsuch adheres to a broad construction of religious liberty under the First Amendment, usually taking the side of employers and other organizations that have religious objections to providing contraception coverage. Despite the common assumption that conservatives generally favor law and order, he has staked out strong positions in favor of Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, going so far as to defend child pornographers twice in such cases. As Gorsuch noted at his Supreme Court nomination, “a judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge.”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>One distinctive feature of Gorsuch’s jurisprudence is his desire to see greater accountability for the practices and policy decisions of federal administrative agencies. This desire is most evident in his opposition to the principle known as <em>Chevron</em> deference, from the 1984 case <em>Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council</em>. The decision states that courts should defer to federal agency interpretations of ambiguous laws within their realm of regulation. Gorsuch believes that principle cedes power to executive agencies that should more properly belong to the legislative and judicial branches.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Another notable feature of Gorsuch’s jurisprudence is his textualism, or emphasis on the plain meaning of the language used in laws. This emphasis played a prominent role in his majority opinion in <em>Bostock v. Clayton County</em> (2020). In that opinion, Gorsuch argued that workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and transgender status fell under the category of “sex” covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result,” he acknowledged. “But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands. . . . Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.” The unexpected ruling was immediately seen as a landmark in civil rights law.</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/encyclopedia-staff" hreflang="und">Encyclopedia Staff</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/neil-gorsuch" hreflang="en">Neil Gorsuch</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/supreme-court" hreflang="en">Supreme Court</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/tenth-circuit" hreflang="en">Tenth Circuit</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/anne-gorsuch" hreflang="en">Anne Gorsuch</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p><a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf"><em>Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia</em></a>, October term 2019, 590 US ____ (2020).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Eric Gershon, “<a href="https://www.colorado.edu/coloradan/2017/03/01/now-neil-gorsuch">Now—Neil Gorsuch</a>,” <em>Coloradan Alumni Magazine</em>, March 1, 2017.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Josh Gerstein, “<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/who-is-neil-gorsuch-bio-facts-background-political-views-234437">Neil Gorsuch: Who Is He? Bio, Facts, Background and Political Views</a>,” <em>Politico</em>, January 31, 2017.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/gorsuch-neil-m">Gorsuch, Neil M.</a>,” Federal Judicial Center, n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/neil_gorsuch">Neil Gorsuch</a>,” <em>Oyez</em>, n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Adam Liptak, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/us/politics/neil-gorsuch-supreme-court-nominee.html">In Judge Neil Gorsuch, an Echo of Scalia in Philosophy and Style</a>,” <em>New York Times</em>, January 31, 2017.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Adam Liptak and Matt Flegenheimer, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/us/politics/neil-gorsuch-supreme-court.html">Neil Gorsuch Confirmed by Senate as Supreme Court Justice</a>,” <em>New York Times</em>, April 7, 2017.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Jeffrey Rosen, “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/a-jeffersonian-on-the-supreme-court/515319/">A Jeffersonian for the Supreme Court</a>,” <em>Atlantic</em>, February 1, 2017.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Simon van Zuylen-Wood, “<a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/05/how-gorsuch-became-the-second-most-polarizing-man-in-d-c.html">Little Scalia</a>,” <em>New York</em>, May 28, 2018.</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p>John Greenya, <em>Gorsuch: The Judge Who Speaks for Himself</em> (New York: Threshold Editions, 2018).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Neil M. Gorsuch, <em>The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia</em> (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Neil Gorsuch, “<a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2005/02/liberalsnlawsuits-joseph-6/">Liberals’N’Lawsuits</a>,” <em>National Review</em>, February 7, 2005.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Neil M. Gorsuch with Jane Nitze and David Feder, <em>A Republic, If You Can Keep It</em> (New York: Crown Forum, 2019).</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Mon, 14 Sep 2020 22:22:27 +0000 yongli 3416 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org Byron White http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/byron-white <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Byron White</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2020-09-14T15:18:45-06:00" title="Monday, September 14, 2020 - 15:18" class="datetime">Mon, 09/14/2020 - 15:18</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/byron-white" data-a2a-title="Byron White"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fbyron-white&amp;title=Byron%20White"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>Byron White (1917–2002) was Colorado’s first-ever US Supreme Court justice, serving from 1962 to 1993, as well as a nationally known college athlete for the <strong>University of Colorado</strong> and a star pro football player. As a justice, White was remembered for his belief in judicial restraint, writing brief, straightforward opinions that argued against expansive interpretations of constitutional rights. Some legal scholars believe his greatest influence came not in written decisions but in face-to-face discussions with his fellow justices. His sterling achievements in sports and long service on the Supreme Court have ensured him an enduring reputation in Colorado, where the Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado Law School and the <strong>Byron White US Courthouse</strong> in <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver"><strong>Denver</strong></a> bear his name.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Early Life</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Byron Raymond White was born in <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/fort-collins"><strong>Fort Collins</strong></a> on June 8, 1917, to Maude and Albert White. He grew up about ten miles north, in the town of <strong>Wellington</strong>, where his father served as mayor and worked as a manager for a lumber company. Byron and his older brother, Clayton Samuel White, made extra money by working in the area’s <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/sugar-beet-industry"><strong>sugar beet</strong></a> fields.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>College Years</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>As valedictorian of his small high school, White received a full scholarship to the University of Colorado (CU). There he followed in the footsteps of his brother, who was a football player and student body president before being selected as a Rhodes Scholar in 1934. The younger White started college that year and became a three-sport star, earning all-conference honors in football, basketball, and baseball. He still managed to earn a straight-A average, making him an easy choice for student body president during his senior year.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>White’s senior year was one of the most remarkable in the history of college athletics. In the fall of 1937, he led CU to an undefeated season and personally led the country in scoring, rushing, and total offense. He was named an All-American and finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting. CU was invited to the Cotton Bowl, the school’s first bowl game, which it lost to Rice Institute. That winter, sportswriters in New York wanted to see White play basketball so badly that they created the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) to bring CU to Madison Square Garden. The team lost to Temple in the finals. White was subjected to intense media attention, which contributed to his lifelong aversion to the press. He was so exhausted after the season that he skipped spring baseball even though he enjoyed the sport and was a .400 hitter.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Sports and Scholarship</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>After graduating as valedictorian, White had an unusual decision to make: enroll at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, or enter the National Football League, where he had been promised the biggest payday in league history. He inclined toward Oxford until he learned that he could play the fall football season and still start one term late at Oxford. Drafted fourth overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates (now the Steelers), White earned his record-high salary of more than $15,000 (about $275,000 today) by leading the league in rushing.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>After the season, White went to Oxford in January 1939 to study law. When <strong>World War II</strong> broke out in September 1939, he returned to the United States. Enrolling at Yale Law School, he received the highest grades in the first-year class. In fall 1940, however, he took a semester off to play football for the Detroit Lions, leading the league in rushing for a second time. He returned to the Lions again the next fall.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>When the United States entered World War II, White enlisted in the US Navy. He was awarded two Bronze Stars for his service in the Pacific Theater. As an intelligence officer, he wrote the report on the sinking of John F. Kennedy’s boat, PT-109.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Early Legal Career</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Back home after the war, White completed his law degree at Yale in 1946, finishing first in his class. He spent a year in Washington, DC, clerking for newly appointed Chief Justice Fred Vinson at the Supreme Court. That year he married Marion Stearns, who was the great-granddaughter of Colorado governor <strong>Frederick Pitkin</strong> and the daughter of University of Colorado president <strong>Robert L. Stearns</strong>. They later had two children, Charles and Nancy. During his year in Washington, White also became reacquainted with John F. Kennedy, who was starting his first term in the US House of Representatives.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1947 White returned to Colorado and joined the Denver law firm of Lewis, Grant, Newton, Davis &amp; Henry, where he spent fourteen years in practice. He changed his policy of avoiding involvement in electoral politics in 1960, when his old friend Kennedy was running for president and asked him to help the campaign in Colorado. White organized Colorado for Kennedy clubs before being asked to head the national Citizens for Kennedy group for the general election, which Kennedy won.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>After Kennedy entered the White House, he named White as deputy attorney general. The Whites moved back to Washington, DC, where White was second-in-command under Robert F. Kennedy at the Department of Justice. White did daily departmental administrative work, recruited new lawyers, helped select federal court nominees, and oversaw departmental initiatives in Congress. As the Civil Rights Movement gained strength, White also worked on federal efforts to prevent violence against peaceful protesters. In May 1961, he was on the ground in Alabama to supervise federal marshals and deputies sent to protect the Freedom Riders on their trip through the state.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Supreme Court</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>In March 1962, President Kennedy nominated White to replace retiring Supreme Court associate justice Charles Whittaker. Calling him “the ideal New Frontier judge,” Kennedy noted that White had “excelled in everything he has attempted.” White was quickly confirmed by the Senate and took his seat on the Supreme Court on April 16, 1962, at the age of forty-four. He reportedly told one colleague that he was being “put out to pasture.”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>During White’s thirty-one years on the Supreme Court, the institution experienced a substantial transformation from the height of the liberal Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1960s until White was the only Democratic nominee remaining when he retired in the early 1990s. White himself was hard to categorize ideologically and has been described as a “nondoctrinaire pragmatist” who focused more on the specific facts of each case than on any sweeping constitutional doctrine. Similarly, White’s written opinions tended to be lean and matter-of-fact, without any rhetorical flourishes, in line with his view that the role of judges should be a modest one.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Judicial Restraint</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Nevertheless, White wrote almost 1,000 opinions during his three decades on the Court and tended to side with the conservatives. Broadly speaking, he believed in a strong but accountable federal government and, most important, judicial deference to the popularly elected branches of government.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>As a result, White often found himself at odds with the Warren Court’s decisions, which inserted the Court forcefully into ongoing political debates. Most notably, White dissented from the majority in <em>Miranda v. Arizona</em> (1966), which required people in police custody to be advised of their rights to an attorney and against self-incrimination. In his dissent, he wrote that the majority opinion “is neither compelled nor even strongly suggested by the language of the Fifth Amendment, is at odds with American and English legal history, and involves a departure from a long line of precedent.”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Throughout his career, White was a strong critic of substantive due process, the doctrine by which courts place certain fundamental rights beyond the scope of government regulation or legislation. White made his view clear in his dissent in <em>Roe v. Wade</em> and <em>Doe v. Bolton</em> (1973), which declared a constitutional right to abortion. “I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment,” he wrote. “This issue, for the most part, should be left with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs.” White continued to dissent in cases involving abortion rights until the end of his career.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>As the Court shifted to a more conservative orientation in the 1970s, White found himself more influential and more often in the majority. Perhaps his most famous opinion in these years came in <em>Bowers v. Hardwick</em> (1986), which upheld a state law criminalizing sodomy. As usual, White argued that there was no constitutional right to homosexual sex that would override state legislative prohibitions. (The decision was overturned by <em>Lawrence v. Texas</em> in 2003.)</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Civil Rights</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Some legal scholars believe White’s most significant opinion came in <em>Washington v. Davis</em> (1976), which held that government policies needed to have discriminatory intent, not simply a discriminatory effect, in order to constitute an equal-protection violation. “Disproportionate impact is not irrelevant,” he wrote, “but it is not the sole touchstone of an invidious racial discrimination forbidden by the Constitution.” The decision was lamented by civil rights advocates because of the high burden it imposed to prove discrimination.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Despite similar votes to curb federal civil rights laws and end state and local affirmative action policies, White consistently supported federal power over states in civil rights matters, perhaps because of his experience in the Department of Justice during the Civil Rights Movement. “Surely the State may not leave in place policies . . . that serve to maintain the racial identifiability of its universities,” he wrote in his majority opinion in <em>United States v.</em> <em>Fordice</em> (1992), which required Mississippi to take affirmative action to better integrate its public universities, “if those policies can practicably be eliminated without eroding sound educational policies.”</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Final Years</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>White announced his retirement from the Supreme Court on March 19, 1993. As a retired justice, he continued to serve as a visiting judge on federal appeals courts, and he also led a commission to study the structure of the federal appeals courts. He sat in the front row of the Supreme Court gallery to watch oral arguments in <em>Bush v. Gore</em> (2000), which would be one of his final public appearances. In 2001 he closed his chambers because of ill health and moved back to Denver with his wife. He died of pneumonia on April 15, 2002, at the age of eighty-four. His funeral was held at <strong>St. John</strong><strong>’</strong><strong>s Cathedral</strong>, where he was interred.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>White’s achievements in sports and the law merited him numerous honors during his life and after his death. In 1954 he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. The NFL Players’ Association’s community service award bore his name from 1967 to 2018. In 1990 the Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law was established at the University of Colorado Law School. In 1994 the newly renovated home of the <strong>US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit</strong> in Denver was renamed the Byron White US Courthouse. In 2003 he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush.</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/encyclopedia-staff" hreflang="und">Encyclopedia Staff</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/byron-white" hreflang="en">Byron White</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/supreme-court" hreflang="en">Supreme Court</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/robert-stearns" hreflang="en">Robert Stearns</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/football" hreflang="en">football</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/civil-rights" hreflang="en">Civil Rights</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/university-colorado" hreflang="en">university of colorado</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p>“<a href="https://www.profootballhof.com/news/1938-national-football-league-draft/">1938 National Football League Draft</a>,” Pro Football Hall of Fame, n.d.</p> <p><a href="https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep478/usrep478186/usrep478186.pdf"><em>Bowers v. Hardwick</em></a>, 478 US 186 (1986).</p> <p>“<a href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/byron_r_white">Byron R. White</a>,”, <em>Oyez</em>, n.d.</p> <p>“<a href="https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/education/byron-white">Byron White</a>,” United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, n.d.</p> <p>“<a href="https://www.gsa.gov/real-estate/historic-preservation/explore-historic-buildings/find-a-building/all-historic-buildings/byron-white-us-courthouse-denver-co">Byron White US Courthouse, Denver, CO</a>,” US General Services Administration, n.d.</p> <p><a href="https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep410/usrep410179/usrep410179.pdf"><em>Doe v. Bolton</em></a>, 410 US 179 (1973).</p> <p>Linda Greenhouse, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/us/byron-r-white-longtime-justice-and-a-football-legend-dies-at-84.html">Byron R. White, Longtime Justice and a Football Legend, Dies at 84</a>,” <em>New York Times</em>, April 16, 2002.</p> <p>Dennis J. Hutchinson, “<a href="https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7515&amp;context=ylj">The Man Who Once Was Whizzer White</a>,” <em>Yale Law Journal</em> 103, no. 1 (1993).</p> <p>Charles Lane and Bret Barnes, “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/04/16/longtime-justice-byron-white-dies/a5c2335a-81d8-4eb4-8696-1cc061a8b9f0/">Longtime Justice Byron White Dies</a>,” <em>Washington Post</em>, April 16, 2002.</p> <p>Douglas Martin, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/02/us/sam-white-91-researcher-on-effects-of-a-bombs-dies.html">Sam White, 91, Researcher on Effects of A-Bombs, Dies</a>,” <em>New York Times</em>, May 2, 2004.</p> <p><a href="https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep384/usrep384436/usrep384436.pdf"><em>Miranda v. Arizona</em></a>, 384 US 436 (1966).</p> <p>Jacob Myers, “<a href="https://www.ncaa.com/news/football/article/2023-12-06/heisman-trophy-winners-and-runners-each-year-1935">Heisman Trophy Winners, Runners-Up Since 1935</a>,” <a href="https://www.ncaa.com/">NCAA.com</a>, December 14, 2019.</p> <p>“<a href="https://nflpa.com/press/nflpa-establishes-alan-page-community-award-as-its-highest-honor">NFLPA Establishes ‘Alan Page Community Award’ as Its Highest Honor</a>,” NFL Players Association, September 4, 2018.</p> <p><a href="https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep505/usrep505717/usrep505717.pdf"><em>United States v. Fordice</em></a>, 505 US 717 (1992).</p> <p><a href="https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep426/usrep426229/usrep426229.pdf"><em>Washington v. Davis</em></a>, 426 US 229 (1976).</p> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p>Dennis J. Hutchinson, <em>The Man Who Once Was Whizzer White: A Portrait of Justice Byron R. White</em> (New York: Free Press, 1998).</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Justice White and the Exercise of Judicial Power</em>, special issue of <em>University of Colorado Law Review</em> 74, no. 4 (Fall 2003).</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-4th-grade--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-4th-grade.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-4th-grade.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-4th-grade field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-field-4th-grade"><p>Byron White (1917–2002) was Colorado’s first-ever US Supreme Court justice. He served from 1962 to 1993. White was also a college athlete and a star pro football player. He played for the University of Colorado. His achievements in sports and long service on the Supreme Court have left a mark on Colorado. The Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado Law School is named for him. The Byron White US Courthouse in Denver also bears his name.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Early Life</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Byron Raymond White was born in Fort Collins on June 8, 1917, to Maude and Albert White. He grew up about ten miles north, in the town of Wellington. His father served as mayor and worked as a manager for a lumber company. Byron and his older brother made extra money by working in the area’s sugar beet fields.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>College Years</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>White received a full scholarship to the University of Colorado (CU). He became a three-sport star. White earned all-conference honors in football, basketball, and baseball. He earned a straight-A average. He became student body president during his senior year.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>White’s senior year was one of the most remarkable in the history of college athletics. In the fall of 1937, he led CU to an undefeated season. White was named an All-American. He finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting. CU was invited to the Cotton Bowl. It was the school’s first bowl game. The team lost to Rice Institute. That winter, sportswriters in New York wanted to see White play basketball. They created the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) to bring CU to Madison Square Garden. The team lost to Temple in the finals. White attracted intense media attention. It contributed to his lifelong aversion to the press. He was so exhausted after the season that he skipped spring baseball.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Sports and Scholarship</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>White graduated valedictorian. He had an unusual decision to make. He could enroll at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. His other option was to enter the National Football League. White had been promised the biggest payday in league history. He leaned toward Oxford until he learned that he could play the fall football season and start one term late at Oxford. White was drafted fourth overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates (now the Steelers). He earned his record-high salary of more than $15,000 (about $275,000 today). White lead the league in rushing.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>White went to Oxford in January 1939 to study law. When World War II broke out in September 1939, he returned to the United States. He enrolled at Yale Law School. White received the highest grades in the first-year class. In fall 1940, he took a semester off to play football for the Detroit Lions. He led the league in rushing for a second time. White returned to the Lions again the next fall.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>When the United States entered World War II, White enlisted in the US Navy. He was awarded two Bronze Stars for his service in the Pacific Theater. As an intelligence officer, he wrote the report on the sinking of John F. Kennedy’s boat.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Early Legal Career</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>White completed his law degree at Yale in 1946. He finished first in his class. He spent a year in Washington, DC, clerking for newly appointed Chief Justice Fred Vinson at the Supreme Court. That year he married Marion Stearns. Marion was the great-granddaughter of Colorado governor Frederick Pitkin. She was also the daughter of University of Colorado president Robert L. Stearns. The couple had two children. During his year in Washington, White also became reacquainted with John F. Kennedy. Kennedy was starting his first term in the US House of Representatives.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1947 White returned to Colorado. He joined the Denver law firm of Lewis, Grant, Newton, Davis &amp; Henry. White he spent fourteen years in practice there. Previously, he had avoided involvement in politics. White changed his policy in 1960, when his old friend Kennedy was running for president. Kennedy asked White to help the campaign in Colorado. White organized Colorado for Kennedy clubs. He was then asked to head the national Citizens for Kennedy group for the general election. Kennedy won the race.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>After Kennedy entered the White House, he named White as deputy attorney general. The Whites moved back to Washington, DC. White was second-in-command under Robert F. Kennedy at the Department of Justice. White did daily departmental administrative work. He recruited new lawyers. White also helped select federal court nominees, and oversaw departmental initiatives in Congress. As the Civil Rights Movement gained strength, White worked on federal efforts to prevent violence against peaceful protesters. In May 1961, he was on the ground in Alabama. He supervised federal marshals and deputies sent to protect the Freedom Riders on their trip through the state.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Supreme Court</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>In March 1962, President Kennedy nominated White to replace retiring Supreme Court associate justice Charles Whittaker. Calling him “the ideal New Frontier judge,” Kennedy noted that White had “excelled in everything he has attempted.” White was confirmed by the Senate. He took his seat on the Supreme Court on April 16, 1962.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>During White’s thirty-one years on the Supreme Court, the institution experienced a  transformation. The Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1960s was liberal. However, White was the only Democratic nominee remaining when he retired in the early 1990s. White himself was hard to categorize ideologically. White focused more on the specific facts of each case than on constitutional doctrine. His written opinions tended to be lean and matter-of-fact.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Judicial Restraint</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>White wrote almost 1,000 opinions during his three decades on the Court. He tended to side with the conservatives. He believed in a strong but accountable federal government.  Most important, White believed in judicial deference to the elected branches of government.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>White often found himself at odds with the Warren Court’s decisions. The decisions inserted the Court forcefully into ongoing political debates.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Throughout his career, White was a strong critic of substantive due process. Substantive due process is the doctrine by which courts place certain fundamental rights beyond the scope of government regulation or legislation. White made his view clear in his dissent in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton (1973). The cases declared a constitutional right to abortion. “I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment,” he wrote. “This issue, for the most part, should be left with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs.” White continued to dissent in cases involving abortion rights until the end of his career.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>As the Court shifted to a more conservative orientation in the 1970s, White found himself more influential. He was often in the majority.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Civil Rights</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>White supported federal power over states in civil rights matters. This may have been a result of his experience in the Department of Justice during the Civil Rights Movement.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Final Years</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>White announced his retirement from the Supreme Court on March 19, 1993. He continued to serve as a visiting judge on federal appeals courts. He sat in the front row of the Supreme Court gallery to watch oral arguments in Bush v. Gore (2000). It was one of his final public appearances. In 2001 he closed his chambers because of ill health. White moved back to Denver with his wife. He died of pneumonia on April 15, 2002, at the age of eighty-four. His funeral was held at St. John’s Cathedral.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>White’s achievements in sports and the law earned him numerous honors during his life and after his death. In 1954 he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. The NFL Players’ Association’s community service award bore his name from 1967 to 2018. In 1990 the Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law was established at the University of Colorado Law School. In 1994 the newly renovated home of the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver was renamed the Byron White US Courthouse. In 2003 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush.</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-8th-grade--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-8th-grade.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-8th-grade.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-8th-grade field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-field-8th-grade"><p>Byron White (1917–2002) was Colorado’s first-ever US Supreme Court justice. He served from 1962 to 1993. White was also a nationally known college athlete and a star pro football player. He played for the University of Colorado. His achievements in sports and long service on the Supreme Court have ensured him an enduring reputation in Colorado. The Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado Law School and the Byron White US Courthouse in Denver bear his name.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Early Life</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Byron Raymond White was born in Fort Collins on June 8, 1917, to Maude and Albert White. He grew up about ten miles north, in the town of Wellington. His father served as mayor and worked as a manager for a lumber company. Byron and his older brother, Clayton Samuel White, made extra money by working in the area’s sugar beet fields.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>College Years</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Whit was valedictorian of his small high school. He received a full scholarship to the University of Colorado (CU). White became a three-sport star, earning all-conference honors in football, basketball, and baseball. He still managed to earn a straight-A average. This mad him an easy choice for student body president during his senior year.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>White’s senior year was one of the most remarkable in the history of college athletics. In the fall of 1937, he led CU to an undefeated season. He personally led the country in scoring, rushing, and total offense. White was named an All-American. He finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting. CU was invited to the Cotton Bowl, the school’s first bowl game. The team lost to Rice Institute. That winter, sportswriters in New York wanted to see White play basketball so badly that they created the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) to bring CU to Madison Square Garden. The team lost to Temple in the finals. White was subjected to intense media attention. It contributed to his lifelong aversion to the press. He was so exhausted after the season that he skipped spring baseball even though he enjoyed the sport and was a .400 hitter.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Sports and Scholarship</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>After graduating as valedictorian, White had an unusual decision to make. He could enroll at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, or enter the National Football League, where he had been promised the biggest payday in league history. He inclined toward Oxford until he learned that he could play the fall football season and still start one term late at Oxford. White was drafted fourth overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates (now the Steelers). He earned his record-high salary of more than $15,000 (about $275,000 today) by leading the league in rushing.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>After the season, White went to Oxford in January 1939 to study law. When World War II broke out in September 1939, he returned to the United States. He enrolled at Yale Law School. White received the highest grades in the first-year class. In fall 1940, he took a semester off to play football for the Detroit Lions. He led the league in rushing for a second time. He returned to the Lions again the next fall.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>When the United States entered World War II, White enlisted in the US Navy. He was awarded two Bronze Stars for his service in the Pacific Theater. As an intelligence officer, he wrote the report on the sinking of John F. Kennedy’s boat, PT-109.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Early Legal Career</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Back home after the war, White completed his law degree at Yale in 1946. He finished first in his class. He spent a year in Washington, DC, clerking for newly appointed Chief Justice Fred Vinson at the Supreme Court. That year he married Marion Stearns. Marion was the great-granddaughter of Colorado governor Frederick Pitkin and the daughter of University of Colorado president Robert L. Stearns. They later had two children, Charles and Nancy. During his year in Washington, White also became reacquainted with John F. Kennedy. Kennedy was starting his first term in the US House of Representatives.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1947 White returned to Colorado. He joined the Denver law firm of Lewis, Grant, Newton, Davis &amp; Henry. White he spent fourteen years in practice there. Previously, he had avoided involvement in politics. White changed his policy in 1960, when his old friend Kennedy was running for president. Kennedy asked White to help the campaign in Colorado. White organized Colorado for Kennedy clubs. He was then asked to head the national Citizens for Kennedy group for the general election, which Kennedy won.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>After Kennedy entered the White House, he named White as deputy attorney general. The Whites moved back to Washington, DC. White was second-in-command under Robert F. Kennedy at the Department of Justice. White did daily departmental administrative work. He recruited new lawyers. White also helped select federal court nominees, and oversaw departmental initiatives in Congress. As the Civil Rights Movement gained strength, White worked on federal efforts to prevent violence against peaceful protesters. In May 1961, he was on the ground in Alabama to supervise federal marshals and deputies sent to protect the Freedom Riders on their trip through the state.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Supreme Court</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>In March 1962, President Kennedy nominated White to replace retiring Supreme Court associate justice Charles Whittaker. Calling him “the ideal New Frontier judge,” Kennedy noted that White had “excelled in everything he has attempted.” White was confirmed by the Senate. He took his seat on the Supreme Court on April 16, 1962. He told one colleague that he was being “put out to pasture.”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>During White’s thirty-one years on the Supreme Court, the institution experienced a  transformation. The Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1960s was liberal. However, White was the only Democratic nominee remaining when he retired in the early 1990s. White himself was hard to categorize ideologically. He was described as a “nondoctrinaire pragmatist.” White focused more on the specific facts of each case than on constitutional doctrine. His written opinions tended to be lean and matter-of-fact.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Judicial Restraint</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>White wrote almost 1,000 opinions during his three decades on the Court. He tended to side with the conservatives. Broadly speaking, he believed in a strong but accountable federal government.  Most important, White believed in judicial deference to the elected branches of government.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>White often found himself at odds with the Warren Court’s decisions. The decisions inserted the Court forcefully into ongoing political debates. Most notably, White dissented from the majority in Miranda v. Arizona (1966).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Throughout his career, White was a strong critic of substantive due process. Substantive due process is the doctrine by which courts place certain fundamental rights beyond the scope of government regulation or legislation. White made his view clear in his dissent in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton (1973). The cases declared a constitutional right to abortion. “I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment,” he wrote. “This issue, for the most part, should be left with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs.” White continued to dissent in cases involving abortion rights until the end of his career.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>As the Court shifted to a more conservative orientation in the 1970s, White found himself more influential. He was often in the majority. Perhaps his most famous opinion in these years came in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986). The case upheld a state law criminalizing sodomy. As usual, White argued that there was no constitutional right to homosexual sex that would override state legislative prohibitions. The decision was overturned by Lawrence v. Texas in 2003.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Civil Rights</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Some legal scholars believe White’s most significant opinion came in Washington v. Davis (1976). The decision held that government policies needed to have discriminatory intent, not simply a discriminatory effect, in order to constitute an equal-protection violation. The decision was lamented by civil rights advocates because of the high burden it imposed to prove discrimination.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>White supported federal power over states in civil rights matters,. This may have been a result of his experience in the Department of Justice during the Civil Rights Movement. “Surely the State may not leave in place policies . . . that serve to maintain the racial identifiability of its universities,” he wrote in his majority opinion in United States v. Fordice (1992), which required Mississippi to take affirmative action to better integrate its public universities, “if those policies can practicably be eliminated without eroding sound educational policies.”</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Final Years</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>White announced his retirement from the Supreme Court on March 19, 1993. As a retired justice, he continued to serve as a visiting judge on federal appeals courts, and he also led a commission to study the structure of the federal appeals courts. He sat in the front row of the Supreme Court gallery to watch oral arguments in Bush v. Gore (2000), which would be one of his final public appearances. In 2001 he closed his chambers because of ill health and moved back to Denver with his wife. He died of pneumonia on April 15, 2002, at the age of eighty-four. His funeral was held at St. John’s Cathedral, where he was interred.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>White’s achievements in sports and the law merited him numerous honors during his life and after his death. In 1954 he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. The NFL Players’ Association’s community service award bore his name from 1967 to 2018. In 1990 the Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law was established at the University of Colorado Law School. In 1994 the newly renovated home of the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver was renamed the Byron White US Courthouse. In 2003 he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush.</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-10th-grade--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-10th-grade.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-10th-grade.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-10th-grade field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-field-10th-grade"><p>Byron White (1917–2002) was Colorado’s first-ever US Supreme Court justice. He served from 1962 to 1993. White was also a nationally known college athlete for the University of Colorado and a star pro football player. As a justice, White was remembered for his belief in judicial restraint, writing brief, straightforward opinions that argued against expansive interpretations of constitutional rights. Some legal scholars believe his greatest influence came not in written decisions but in face-to-face discussions with his fellow justices. His sterling achievements in sports and long service on the Supreme Court have ensured him an enduring reputation in Colorado. The Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado Law School and the Byron White US Courthouse in Denver bear his name.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Early Life</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Byron Raymond White was born in Fort Collins on June 8, 1917, to Maude and Albert White. He grew up about ten miles north, in the town of Wellington. His father served as mayor and worked as a manager for a lumber company. Byron and his older brother, Clayton Samuel White, made extra money by working in the area’s sugar beet fields.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>College Years</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Whit was valedictorian of his small high school. He received a full scholarship to the University of Colorado (CU). There he followed in the footsteps of his brother, who was a football player and student body president before being selected as a Rhodes Scholar in 1934. The younger White started college that year. He became a three-sport star, earning all-conference honors in football, basketball, and baseball. He still managed to earn a straight-A average. This mad him an easy choice for student body president during his senior year.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>White’s senior year was one of the most remarkable in the history of college athletics. In the fall of 1937, he led CU to an undefeated season and personally led the country in scoring, rushing, and total offense. He was named an All-American. White finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting. CU was invited to the Cotton Bowl, the school’s first bowl game, which it lost to Rice Institute. That winter, sportswriters in New York wanted to see White play basketball so badly that they created the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) to bring CU to Madison Square Garden. The team lost to Temple in the finals. White was subjected to intense media attention. It contributed to his lifelong aversion to the press. He was so exhausted after the season that he skipped spring baseball even though he enjoyed the sport and was a .400 hitter.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Sports and Scholarship</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>After graduating as valedictorian, White had an unusual decision to make. He could enroll at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, or enter the National Football League, where he had been promised the biggest payday in league history. He inclined toward Oxford until he learned that he could play the fall football season and still start one term late at Oxford. Drafted fourth overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates (now the Steelers), White earned his record-high salary of more than $15,000 (about $275,000 today) by leading the league in rushing.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>After the season, White went to Oxford in January 1939 to study law. When World War II broke out in September 1939, he returned to the United States. Enrolling at Yale Law School, he received the highest grades in the first-year class. In fall 1940, however, he took a semester off to play football for the Detroit Lions. He led the league in rushing for a second time. He returned to the Lions again the next fall.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>When the United States entered World War II, White enlisted in the US Navy. He was awarded two Bronze Stars for his service in the Pacific Theater. As an intelligence officer, he wrote the report on the sinking of John F. Kennedy’s boat, PT-109.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Early Legal Career</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Back home after the war, White completed his law degree at Yale in 1946, finishing first in his class. He spent a year in Washington, DC, clerking for newly appointed Chief Justice Fred Vinson at the Supreme Court. That year he married Marion Stearns, who was the great-granddaughter of Colorado governor Frederick Pitkin and the daughter of University of Colorado president Robert L. Stearns. They later had two children, Charles and Nancy. During his year in Washington, White also became reacquainted with John F. Kennedy, who was starting his first term in the US House of Representatives.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1947 White returned to Colorado and joined the Denver law firm of Lewis, Grant, Newton, Davis &amp; Henry, where he spent fourteen years in practice. He changed his policy of avoiding involvement in electoral politics in 1960, when his old friend Kennedy was running for president and asked him to help the campaign in Colorado. White organized Colorado for Kennedy clubs before being asked to head the national Citizens for Kennedy group for the general election, which Kennedy won.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>After Kennedy entered the White House, he named White as deputy attorney general. The Whites moved back to Washington, DC, where White was second-in-command under Robert F. Kennedy at the Department of Justice. White did daily departmental administrative work, recruited new lawyers, helped select federal court nominees, and oversaw departmental initiatives in Congress. As the Civil Rights Movement gained strength, White also worked on federal efforts to prevent violence against peaceful protesters. In May 1961, he was on the ground in Alabama to supervise federal marshals and deputies sent to protect the Freedom Riders on their trip through the state.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Supreme Court</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>In March 1962, President Kennedy nominated White to replace retiring Supreme Court associate justice Charles Whittaker. Calling him “the ideal New Frontier judge,” Kennedy noted that White had “excelled in everything he has attempted.” White was quickly confirmed by the Senate and took his seat on the Supreme Court on April 16, 1962, at the age of forty-four. He reportedly told one colleague that he was being “put out to pasture.”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>During White’s thirty-one years on the Supreme Court, the institution experienced a substantial transformation from the height of the liberal Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1960s until White was the only Democratic nominee remaining when he retired in the early 1990s. White himself was hard to categorize ideologically and has been described as a “nondoctrinaire pragmatist” who focused more on the specific facts of each case than on any sweeping constitutional doctrine. Similarly, White’s written opinions tended to be lean and matter-of-fact, without any rhetorical flourishes, in line with his view that the role of judges should be a modest one.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Judicial Restraint</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Nevertheless, White wrote almost 1,000 opinions during his three decades on the Court and tended to side with the conservatives. Broadly speaking, he believed in a strong but accountable federal government and, most important, judicial deference to the popularly elected branches of government.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>As a result, White often found himself at odds with the Warren Court’s decisions, which inserted the Court forcefully into ongoing political debates. Most notably, White dissented from the majority in Miranda v. Arizona (1966), which required people in police custody to be advised of their rights to an attorney and against self-incrimination. In his dissent, he wrote that the majority opinion “is neither compelled nor even strongly suggested by the language of the Fifth Amendment, is at odds with American and English legal history, and involves a departure from a long line of precedent.”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Throughout his career, White was a strong critic of substantive due process, the doctrine by which courts place certain fundamental rights beyond the scope of government regulation or legislation. White made his view clear in his dissent in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton (1973), which declared a constitutional right to abortion. “I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment,” he wrote. “This issue, for the most part, should be left with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs.” White continued to dissent in cases involving abortion rights until the end of his career.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>As the Court shifted to a more conservative orientation in the 1970s, White found himself more influential and more often in the majority. Perhaps his most famous opinion in these years came in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), which upheld a state law criminalizing sodomy. As usual, White argued that there was no constitutional right to homosexual sex that would override state legislative prohibitions. (The decision was overturned by Lawrence v. Texas in 2003.)</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Civil Rights</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Some legal scholars believe White’s most significant opinion came in Washington v. Davis (1976), which held that government policies needed to have discriminatory intent, not simply a discriminatory effect, in order to constitute an equal-protection violation. “Disproportionate impact is not irrelevant,” he wrote, “but it is not the sole touchstone of an invidious racial discrimination forbidden by the Constitution.” The decision was lamented by civil rights advocates because of the high burden it imposed to prove discrimination.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Despite similar votes to curb federal civil rights laws and end state and local affirmative action policies, White consistently supported federal power over states in civil rights matters, perhaps because of his experience in the Department of Justice during the Civil Rights Movement. “Surely the State may not leave in place policies . . . that serve to maintain the racial identifiability of its universities,” he wrote in his majority opinion in United States v. Fordice (1992), which required Mississippi to take affirmative action to better integrate its public universities, “if those policies can practicably be eliminated without eroding sound educational policies.”</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Final Years</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>White announced his retirement from the Supreme Court on March 19, 1993. As a retired justice, he continued to serve as a visiting judge on federal appeals courts, and he also led a commission to study the structure of the federal appeals courts. He sat in the front row of the Supreme Court gallery to watch oral arguments in Bush v. Gore (2000), which would be one of his final public appearances. In 2001 he closed his chambers because of ill health and moved back to Denver with his wife. He died of pneumonia on April 15, 2002, at the age of eighty-four. His funeral was held at St. John’s Cathedral, where he was interred.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>White’s achievements in sports and the law merited him numerous honors during his life and after his death. In 1954 he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. The NFL Players’ Association’s community service award bore his name from 1967 to 2018. In 1990 the Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law was established at the University of Colorado Law School. In 1994 the newly renovated home of the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver was renamed the Byron White US Courthouse. In 2003 he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush.</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Mon, 14 Sep 2020 21:18:45 +0000 yongli 3415 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org