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A great liberal hero died this week; William Wayne Justice, former U.S. District Judge in the Eastern District of Texas.
Judge Justice presided over some of the most significant civil and human rights cases of the 1970’s through early 2000’s, from the case that brought the Texas prison system out of the middle ages to the one that told the State and its school districts that they could not treat immigrant schoolchildren differently from native-born children, whether or not they had “papers.”
Molly Ivins, quoted in the New York Times obituary, once
“made what she called the ‘painfully obvious point’ that Judge Justice had lived up to his name, saying he “brought the United States Constitution to Texas.”
The man lived for years with death threats from the right wingers who thought he was the devil. I didn’t know till I read it today that rather than take on security, he learned tae kwon do.
Judge Justice was still hearing cases on senior status (a sort of emeritus position federal judges may take after retirement; they hear cases on a reduced schedule) in Austin, where he died Tuesday. The Times obituary appeared yesterday, October 15, 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/us/16justice.html?hpw
Progressives who value the Constitution and equal treatment for all should know and revere his name.
17 Comments
Thanks, I knew nothing about this guy.
Recommended.
Never heard of him, thanks for bringing this to our attention!
He was a lion!
Rec’d, too!
Good one, Tej!
Recommended. Thanks Tejana, I’m glad to know about him.
Wow, Judge Justice. In Texas even!
Thank you. Important that he be acknowledged.
wow — a great first diary tejan — thank you for writing it to let us know of his passing.
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Love the Molly Ivins quote: he “brought the United States Constitution to Texas.”
Thank you. This man is someone who should be remembered.
Suzanne! Thank you! Glad you liked it.
I see I screwed up the link, somehow, but the quotes worked, at least.
we all learn by doing tejan — the link works if ya cut and paste it into another tab and enter
tomorrow nite during my lln post, remind me and i’ll walk ya through how to embed a link in a diary
Okay, thanks.
What a great inaugural diary. Thank you so much for telling us about this brave man who fought for truth, justice, and the American Way. May other Texans profit from his extraordinary example.
Thank you ever so much for this, tejanarusa. Judge Justice knew few equals, certainly not in TX. I provided a link to this story at another site and the response, sadly, was crickets. You have given a fine tribute to his life and work.
I thought Justice brought the Texas prison system INTO the dark ages, as in, it was that much worse before Justice arrived on the scene, and is still horrific, as in “bring out your dead.”
Didn’t Justice also command Texas to equalize school funding through the Robin Hood plan?
I miss Molly Ivins.
Thank you, Teddy, fatster, marcos.
fatster – sorry about the crickets elsewhere…I did do a little of what, on a writer’s listserve years ago, was called bsp – blatant self-promotion – at Late Late Night.
But, of course, firepups are always interested in someone like Judge Justice.
marcos – you have a point – and certainly, the case lasted so long because it was constantly going back to court for review.
Not sure about Robin Hood – vague memory that that came from a state judge in Austin…would have to look it up, may be all wrong about that.
And, yes, don’t we all miss Molly Ivins.
I can’t tell you the smile it brought to my face and spring to my step when I learned that the Highland Park Independent School District where I was ground through high school in the 1970s was compelled to shovel millions of dollars into the equalization fund to help districts like WIlmer Hutchins. I’d naturally assumed that the only force capable of that would have been Justice. As a forced liberal transplant from NY to the depths of Dallas in the 1970s, Justice was one of the few rays of hope, of sanity in the mire which would soon infect the nation politically.
At a certain level due to forced familiarity, I can grudgingly understand Texas conservatives.
But Texas can never redeem itself after they allowed Las Manitas in Austin to be closed to make way for a Marriott, I mean a place where both people like Karl Rove and people like me were able to eat in the same room without killing one another, a DMZ for the spectrum of Austin politicos with killer enchiladas rojas y frijoles negras, Sunday brunch as universal sacrament with tankards of iced tea in the heat.
Thanks, tejanarusa! I prosecuted in the late 1980s in Dallas, N.D.Tex. Never heard of Judge William Wayne Justice of the Eastern District until your diary. How lonely he must have been!
Where red, white, and blue are the colors of TEXAS, honey, it is heartening to know of a federal district court judge who risked his life to make Texas part of the United States. May Judge Justice indeed rest in peace.
That surprises me – although I guess the biggest cases of his career were earlier, but still…in my few years working for a W.D. magistrate in late ’80′s, his name came up from time to time. Of course, we saw lots of prisoner cases; maybe that put the major case he oversaw on our radar more. But I’m sure I learned of him in law school in Boston, and not just because of my paper on the immigrant children’s case. Anyway, all these comments are making me very glad I wrote this.