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Name:
Thurgood Marshall
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Dates:
Born: July 2, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland
Died: January 24, 1993
Law Degree from Howard University: 1933 (first in his class)
Won Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka: 1954
Appointed circuit judge: 1961 (all 112 rulings upheld)
Associate Justice: 1967 - June 28, 1991
Biography:
The first black man ever appointed to the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall was the
grandson of slaves who was the driving legal force behind court challenges to
segregation in housing, transportation, politics, criminal justice and education. His
work led to twenty-nine victories in the Supreme Court, including the landmark case of
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in which the Court held that the doctrine
of "separate but equal" was unconstitutional.
Although Marshall started out part of the liberal wing of the Warren Court, the makeup of the Supreme Court was rapidly shifting to the right and Marshall found himself in the minority. After that point Thurgood Marshall rarely wrote major decisions regarding free speech and criminal procedure and most of his influence was exerted through strongly-worded dissents. It is thus unfortunate that most of his impact on the development of constitutional and legal principles occurred not while Marshall was a Supreme Court Justice, but rather while he was still a lawyer, arguing cases before the Court.
Also Known As: none
Alternate Spellings: none
Common Misspellings: none
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?
