Henry Billings Brown
Henry Billings Brown (March 2, 1836 – September 4, 1913) was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1891 to 1906. Although a respected lawyer and U.S. District Judge before ascending to the high court, Brown is harshly criticized for writing the majority opinion in "Plessy v. Ferguson", widely regarded as one of the most ill-considered decisions ever issued by the Court, which upheld the legality of racial segregation in public transportation. "Plessy" legitimized existing state laws establishing racial segregation, and provided an impetus for later segregation statutes. Legislative achievements won during  the Reconstruction Era were erased through "Plessy's" "separate but equal" doctrine. Brown has mostly been forgotten, or remembered only in derision for his obtuse statements in the "Plessy" opinion, such as his frequently-ridiculed rejection of a claim that the Louisiana segregation statute at issue "stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so [Brown wrote], it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it." Early career. Family and education. Brown was born in South Lee, Massachusetts, the son of  Mary Tyler and Billings Brown, and grew up in Massachusetts and Connecticut. His was a New England merchant family. He attended Monson Academy, Monson, MA and entered Yale College at 16. There he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and was elected to membership in Phi Beta Kappa. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree there in 1856. Among his undergraduate classmates were Chauncey Depew, later a U.S. Senator from New York, and David Josiah Brewer, who became Brown's colleague on the Supreme Court. Depew roomed across the hall from Brown for three years in Old North  Middle Hall, and remembered ”a feminine quality [about Brown] which led to his being called Henrietta” by classmates in his all-male college. After a yearlong tour of Europe, Brown studied law with Judge John H. Brockway in Ellington, Connecticut, but his refusal to participate in a local religious revival made life there unpleasant for him. He left Ellington to pursue legal studies, with a year at Yale Law School, and a semester at Harvard Law School. Legal activities in Detroit. Admitted to the Michigan Bar in 1860, Brown's early law practice was in Detroit, Michigan, where he specialized  in admiralty law as it applied to shipping on the Great Lakes. In addition to his private law practice, at times between 1861 and 1868 Brown served as Deputy U.S. Marshal, Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, and to fill an opening was appointed judge of the Wayne County Circuit Court in Detroit, although he only served briefly in that position and lost an election for a full term. He then became a partner specializing in admiralty law in the firm of Newberry, Pond & Brown, and practiced there for seven years. In 1872 Brown failed in  an attempt to win the Republican nomination for a congressional seat. Personal life. In 1864, Brown married Caroline Pitts, the daughter of a wealthy Michigan lumber merchant. They had no children. He did not serve in the Union Army during the Civil War, but like many well-to-do men instead hired a substitute soldier to take his place. Brown kept diaries from his college days until his appointment as a federal judge in 1875. Now held in the Burton Historical Collection of the Detroit Public Library, they suggest that he was both genial and ambitious, but also depressed and  doubtful about himself. As a child Brown attended his family's Congregational Church, and when married to his first wife he accompanied her to a Presbyterian Church, but he was generally uninterested in religious matters. Federal judicial service. District court service. Appointment. The death of Brown's father-in-law left Brown and his wife financially independent, so he was willing to accept the relatively low salary of a federal judge. On 17 March 1875 Brown was nominated by President Ulysses Grant to a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan left vacant by  the death of John Wesley Longyear. Brown was confirmed by the United States Senate two days later and immediately received his commission. Publishing and teaching. Brown edited a collection of rulings and orders in important admiralty cases from inland waters, and later compiled a case book on admiralty law for lectures at Georgetown University. He also taught admiralty law classes at the University of Michigan Law School from 1860 to 1875, and medical jurisprudence at the Detroit Medical College (now the medical school of Wayne State University) from 1868 to 1871. Brown received honorary doctoral degrees from the University of  Michigan in 1887, and from Yale University in 1891. Supreme Court. Appointment. Brown was nominated by President Benjamin Harrison as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court on December 23, 1890, to succeed Samuel Freeman Miller. Harrison, who had earlier considered Brown for a Supreme Court appointment following the death of Stanley Matthews the previous year, activily lobbied senators on Brown's behalf. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate by voice vote on December 29, 1890, and was sworn into office on January 5, 1891. In an autobiographical essay, Brown commented ”While I had been much attached  to Detroit and its people, there was much to compensate me in my new sphere of activity. If the duties of the new office were not so congenial to my taste as those of district judge, it was a position of far more dignity, was better paid and was infinitely more gratifying to one's ambition.” Jurisprudence. As a jurist, Brown was generally against government intervention in business, and joined the majority opinion in "Lochner v. New York" (1905) striking down a limitation on maximum working hours. He did, however, support the federal income tax in "Pollock v. Farmers' Loan  & Trust Co." (1895), and wrote for the Court in " Holden v. Hardy" (1898), upholding a Utah law restricting male miners to an eight-hour day. Section::::"Plessy v. Ferguson". Brown is best known, and widely criticized, for the 1896 decision in "Plessy v. Ferguson", in which he wrote the majority opinion upholding the principle and legitimacy of ”separate but equal” facilities for American blacks and whites. In his opinion, Brown argued that the recognition of racial difference did not necessarily violate constitutional principle. As long as equal facilities and services were available to all citizens, the ”commingling of the two races ” need not be enforced. "Plessy", which provided legal support for the system of Jim Crow Laws, was effectively overruled by the Court in "Brown v. Board of Education" in 1954. When issued, "Plessy" attracted relatively little attention, but in the late 20th century it came to be condemned, with maledictions falling on Brown for having written it. Insular Cases. Justice Brown authored the Court's 1901 opinions in "DeLima v. Bidwell" and "Downes v. Bidwell", two of the Insular Cases, considering the status of territories acquired by the U.S. in the Spanish–American War of 1898. Section::::"Hale v. Henkel". Brown  expounded for the majority the powers accorded to the grand jury in "Hale v. Henkel", a 1906 case where the defendant—a tobacco company executive—refused to testify to the grand jury on several grounds in a case based upon the Sherman Antitrust Act. This opinion, said to be among his best, was rendered 12 March 1906, only 10 weeks before his retirement. Personal life in Washington, D.C.. In 1891 he paid $25,000 () to the Riggs family for land at 1720 16th Street, NW, in Washington, D.C., hired architect William Henry Miller, and built a five-story, 18-room  mansion for $40,000 (). He would live in this house, later known as the Toutorsky Mansion, until his death. Ironically—in light of Brown's racial attitudes—the house is now the embassy of the Republic of the Congo. Brown's wife Caroline died in 1901. Three years later, Brown married a close friend of hers, the widow Josephine E. Tyler, who survived him. Retirement. Near the end of his years on the Court, Brown largely lost his eyesight. He retired from the Court on 28 May 1906 at the age of 70. Death. Brown died of heart disease on  4 September 1913 at a hotel in Bronxville, New York. He is buried next to his first wife in Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit. Legacy. Decisions concerning minority groups. Despite "Plessy v. Ferguson," Brown as a judge did not invariably vote against the interests of minority litigants. For example, in "Ward v. Race Horse", Brown was the sole dissenter when the Court held that tribal hunting rights granted under an 1869 treaty with the Bannock Indians must yield to a state law prohibiting them. As to the Chinese Exclusion Act, Brown voted with the majority in "United States v. Wong Kim  Ark" that a child born in the United States of Chinese parents was a U.S. citizen under the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Brown also voted with the majority in "Wong Wing v. United States," in holding that Chinese persons allegedly in the United States illegally may not be imprisoned at hard labor without a trial pending deportation. Brown also joined Justice David Brewer's dissent in "Giles v. Harris", arguing Black Americans had a right to challenge voter suppression in federal court. Abilities. Brown has been remembered as ”a capable and solid, if unimaginative, legal  technician.” One of his friends offered the faint praise that Brown's life ”shows how a man without perhaps extraordinary abilities may attain and honour the highest judicial position by industry, by good character, pleasant manners and some aid from fortune”. His obituary in the "New York Times" stated that on the Supreme Court Brown "gained a reputation for the strictest impartiality"; that he was "courteous to counsel", "was noted for his willingness to admit that he had committed an error", and finally that "he was remarkably free from pride of opinion". Elena Kagan Confirmation Hearing. Perhaps the public nadir  of Brown's legacy occurred during the 2010 Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for then Solicitor General, and former Harvard Law School Dean, Elena Kagan to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Kagan admitted that she did not know who Brown was, and her questioner, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, then mentioned Brown with disdain: Absence of memorials. A Liberty ship named after him, the Henry B. Brown (hull number 938), was launched in 1943 and scrapped in 1965. Apart from a sepulchral monument in a Detroit cemetery, there are no known statues, named schools or  buildings or institutions, or any other memorials to Brown. There has been no book-length biography published about him.