University Daily Kansan / Tuesday, May 1, 1990
3日
Justice,84,not ready to hang up robes
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — He's 84 now, a passionate liberal on an increasingly conservative Supreme Court. His health is not the best, but William J. Brennan said he was having too much fun to retire.
"I'm still enjoymyself. Nothing possibly could be as satisfying," he said in an interview days before his 84th birthday Wednesday.
"I've been having some bad health of late. I had that dogdough attack that started, I thought, as influenza," Brennan said, referring to a March illness now thought to have been a bronchial infection.
"They gave me some antibiotics, and I had a bad reaction, lost a lot of weight," he said. "They told me it might be as long as three months before I finally get fully recovered from it."
But he does not plan to retire.
"I if I can keep on the way I am, I'm going to stay," he said.
His stay has lasted 34 years and has transcended the administrations of eight presidents.
In the court's history, only one justice, William O. Douglas, wrote more opinions. Only three court members have been older. Oliver Wendell Hensley served at 91, Roger Taney at 87 and Hugo Black at 85.
Few have written with such literary grace and eloquence.
Appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Brennan helped lead a
liberal revolution in U.S. law through the 1980s. The prosecution of individual rights was elevated to new heights.
Some called Brennan an ideologue and an activist. Some called him a champion of the underdog.
In a 1987 speech to a law school, he said, "When I think of the progress we have made over the last 30 years, I look upon our system of civil liberties with some satisfaction and a certain pride."
Wrote historic opinions
Gradually, his role changed. Ronald Reagan's legacy of three key court appointments has left Brennan often outnamed in his fight against a nascent conservative counter-revolution.
"In recent years, the other side has pretty much carried the day," Brennan said. "That strikes me as nothing more than a joke," he said, the president falls on the vacancies."
In a recent interview published in New Yorker magazine, Brennan was quoted as saying, "I'm not discouraged to the point of giving up. I hope people don't overdo the suggestion that we're headed for perdition.
"I'm not going to walk out and say the hell with it."
Even in recent years, Brennan has registered major successes. Some of her accomplishments are conservative Washington Legal Foundation to say, "Unfortunately, I
think the man is extremely intelligent. He's been a key player now under three chief justices. He deserves professional respect."
Brennan said he would retire when he was unable to carry on.
"I have a pledge from my wife that the day she notice it she tell me," he said. "I think it would be so wrong to stay here unless you fully able to do your job. Too much rides on what we do around here."
Among the more than 1,200 opinions written by Brennan are landmarks that imposed a "one person, one vote" standard for electing state legislatures, created constitutional protections for libel lawsuits defendants and helped invent a legal definition of obscurity.
New York University law professor Burt Neuberth, evaluating Brennan's opinions and his contribution to the justices' deliberations, once called him the most influential Supreme Court member since John Marshall, the great chief justice of the early 19th century.
The comment makes Brennan wince.
"Honestly, that so overstated, so overdrawn. Even the greats of the past — Holmes, Brandeis — they'd need to stand for such a claim," he said.
Respect for the Constitution
But retired Justice Lewis F. Powell, Brennan's colleague for 15 years,
sad in a recent interview, "I have no doubt he will have a high ranking among the court's members. Bill is one of history's great justices."
Reminded of his reputation as a skilled behind-the-scenes coalition builder, Brennan took exception.
Although far more conservative than Brennan in his judicial views, Powell said his professional differing never impaired their friendship.
"I don't know who invented that. You know damn well it is not true," he said. "You do your best, and as often as not when you end up with a majority, it reflects many ideas of your colleagues and not only yours."
He said the court's members persuaded each other in written memos, not in backroom deals or smoke-filled meetings.
A sample of Brennan's writing style, and perhaps his power of persuasion, was displayed in a memorial at the Capitol for the Constitution's 200th birthday.
"Our entire Constitution is a national treasure; a document of heady ideals and eloquent, elegant language," he wrote for individual rights." he wrote.
"But one thing the old parchment is not a china doll that has to be protected from the regular world by a good layer of cotton wool. It is a fabric made from a collar quite a few respectable denins in the line of duty."
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