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Name:
William J. Brennan, Jr.
William Joseph Brennan, Jr.
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Dates:
Born: April 25, 1906 in Newark, New Jersey
Died: July 24, 1997 in Arlington, Virginia
Associate Justice of U.S. Supreme Court: 1956 - 1990
Biography:
William J. Brennan Jr. was appointed by Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower,
and Eisenhower would later come to regard that as one of this worst mistakes ever.
Nevertheless, both critics and supporters agree that Brennan has been one of the most
influential and important justices in this history of the Supreme Court - something made
evident even from his first years as a Justice there.
It is interesting to note that when Brennan was first appointed to the Supreme Court, many were concerned that as a Catholic, Brennan would be primarily concerned with representing and enforcing the doctrines and morals of the Roman Catholic Church. Not only did this not turn out to be the case, but guided more by his judicial philosophy than by his Catholicism Brennan in fact often outraged Catholics and Catholic leaders with his decisions in cases on things liks school prayer, abortion, obscenity, birth control, and more.
Aside from his extensive judicial experience on the state level, a primary reason for his great influence was that Brennan was not always as liberal as he is commonly portrayed. Analysis of his voting patterns indicates that he tended to be more moderate than other liberals on the Warren Court, and his efforts to frame his decisions in more moderate language tended to help him forge a greater consensus among justices on both the left and the right, leading to him gaining a more prominent role. His positive and friendly personality also aided him greatly in forging consensus among otherwise disparate parties - even when the composition of the Court changed and shifted further and further to the right under chief justices Burger and Rehnquist.
William J. Brennan is a frequent target of those who complain about "judicial activism," the idea of judges ruling from the bench, invalidating the laws created by democratically elected officials in favor of personal policy preferences. Brennan rejected such criticisms, arguing that the very nature of our political system itself requires the Supreme Court to protect certain values and rights against the whims of democratic majorities. Some of these values and rights were laid out explicitly in the Constitution, but for Brennan others were implied in the Constitution's language and general purpose - thus, for example, Brennan believed in an expansive right to "privacy" which protected individuals against government intrusion on a number of levels.
For Brennan, court cases were another means by which people engaged in political activity and pursued political ends. Indeed, he believed that litigation was very often the only means by which political minorities could make their views heard and achieve redress of their grievances against unsympathetic majorities. Thus, a sympathetic court system which protects individual rights agaisnt majorities was very often the only alternative to political violence; as a consequence, Brennan saw as one of his most important tasks the protection and expansion of people's access to the federal courts.
Of course, with the Supreme Court moving increasingly to the right and displaying less and less interest in protecting strong civil liberties against government powers, Brennan found himself more and more often in dissent. Looking to find other means for protecting civil liberties, Brennan began in the 1970s to urge state courts to become more proactive and to interpret state constitutions more broadly, thus protecting civil liberties before cases even reaching the increasingly conservative federal courts. This was ironic because through much of his career on the Supreme Court he fought against the tendencies towards stronger federalism and greater states' rights against federal power and protections.
Also Known As: none
Alternate Spellings: none
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Related Resources:
What are Political and Legal Philosophy
The Philosophy of Politics and the Philosophy of Law are often studied separately, but they are presented here jointly because they both come back to the same thing: the study of force. Politics is the study of political force in the general community, while jurisprudence is the study of how laws can and should be used to achieve political and social goals.What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and epistemology?
