Henry Billings Brown, 52nd Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Henry Billings Brown (March 2, 1836 - September 4, 1913) was an American jurist who served as 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, an opinion 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.
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, as his family was of entire English Puritan descent, emigrating following the Puritan migration to New England (1620–1640). The first ancestor who arrived was Edward Brown, settling in Ipswich, Massachusetts. 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.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Links
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Loveginsburg
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Loveginsburg
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/joanruthbaderginsburg
This page was created by the Independent Director of the Supreme Court of the United States, Abraham Lincoln Ginsburg. (Reference 28 U.S. Code §608 - Seal, Fair use is a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression. See 37 C.F.R. 201.2(a)(3). Contact Email: i.love.ruth.bader.ginsburg@gmail.com)