Hugo Black

Hugo LaFayette Black (February 27, 1886 – September 25, 1971) was an
American politician and jurist. A member of the Democratic Party and the Ku Klux
Klan, Black represented the state of Alabama in the United States Senate from 1927
to 1937, and served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United
States from 1937 until his death.

Quotes
Under our constitutional system, courts stand against any winds that
blow as havens of refuge for those who might otherwise suf fer because
they are helpless, weak, outnumbered, or because they are non-
conforming victims of prejudice and public excitement...No higher duty ,
or more solemn responsibility rests upon this Court than that of
translating into living law and maintaining this constitutional shield
deliberately planned and inscribed for the benefit of every human being
subject to our Constitution — of whatever race, creed, or persuasion.
Only a free and unrestrained press
Writing for the court, Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940).
can effectively expose deception in
It is part of the established tradition in the use of juries as instruments of government.
public justice that the jury be a body truly representative of the
community. For racial discrimination to resultin the exclusion from Jury
service of otherwise qualified groups not only violates our Constitution and the laws enacted under it, but is at war
with our basic concepts of a democratic society and a representative government. W e must consider this record in
the light of these important principles. The fact that the written words of a state's laws hold out a promise that no
such discrimination will be practiced is not enough. TheFourteenth Amendmentrequires that equal protection to all
must be given — not merely promised.

Writing for the court, Smith v. Texas, 33 U.S. 129 (1940).

[...] all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect. That is not to
say that all such restrictions are unconstitutional.

Writing for the court, Korematsu v. United States, 33 U.S. 124 (1944).

The liberty of every American citizen freely to come and to go must frequently , in the face of sudden danger, be
temporarily limited or suspended. The civil authorities must often resort to the expedient of excluding citizens
temporarily from a locality.

Writing for the court, Korematsu v. United States, 33 U.S. 124 (1944).

Again, it is a new doctrine of constitutional law that one indicted for disobedience to an unconstitutional statute may
not defend on the ground of the invalidity of the statute, but must obey it though he knows it is no law
, and, after he
has suffered the disgrace of conviction and lost his liberty by sentence, then, and not before, seek, from within prison
walls, to test the validity of the law.

Writing for the court, Korematsu v. United States, 33 U.S. 124 (1944).

The 'establishment of religion' clause of theFirst Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal
Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion
over another. Neither can force nor influencea person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or
force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing
religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be
levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may
adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly , participate in
the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against
establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State'.

Writing for the court, Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947).
That Amendment requires the state to be a neutral in its relations with groups of religious believers and
nonbelievers; it does not require the state to be their adversary
. State power is no more to be used so as to
handicap religions than it is to favor them.

Writing for the court in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947) about the consequences of the First
Amendments Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause for the separation of church and state.

The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and
impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.

Writing for the court, Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947).

To hold that a state cannot, consistently withthe First and Fourteenth Amendments, utilize its public school system
to aid any or all religious faiths or sects in the dissemination of their doctrines and ideals does not, as counsel urge,
manifest a governmental hostility to religion or religious teachings. A manifestation of such hostility would be at war
with our national tradition as embodied in the First Amendment's guaranty of the free exercise of religion. For the
First Amendment rests upon the premise that both religion and government can best work to achieve their
lofty aims if each is left free from the other within its respective sphere. Or, as we said in the Everson case, the
First Amendment has erected a wall between Church and State which must be kept high and impregnable.

Writing for the court, McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203 (1948).

The First Amendment provides the only kind of security system that can preserve a free government – one
that leaves the way wide open for people to favor
, discuss, advocate, or incite causes and doctrines
however obnoxious and antagonistic such views may be to the rest of us.

Concurring opinion, Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298 (1957).

The First Amendment's language leaves no room for inference that abridgments of speech and press can be made
just because they are slight. That Amendment provides, in simple words, that "Congress shall make no law . . .
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."I read "no law . . . abridging" to mean no law abridging.

Concurring opinion, Smith v. California, 361 U.S. 147 (1959).

It is my belief that thereare "absolutes" in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by
men who knew what the words meant and meant their prohibitions to be "absolutes."

James Madison Lecture at theNew York University School of Law(February 17, 1960).

Bad men, like good men, are entitled to be tried and sentenced in accordance with law , and when it is shown to us
that a person is serving an illegal sentence our obligation is to direct that proper steps be taken to correct the wrong
done, without regard to the character of a particular defendant or to the possible fect
ef on others who might also
want to challenge the legality of their sentences as they have the right to do 'at any time' under Rule 35. If it has any
relevance at all, the fact that there may be other prisoners in this country's jails serving illegal sentences would seem
to me to make it all the more imperative that we grant appropriate relief in this case rather than search for some
obviously dubious excuse to deny this petitioner's claim.

Dissenting in Green v. United States, 365 U.S. 301, 309-310 (1961).

Our Founders were no more willing to let the content of their prayers and their privilege of praying whenever they
pleased be influenced by the ballot box than they were to let these vital matters of personal conscience depend upon
the succession of monarchs.The First Amendment was added to the Constitution to stand as a guarantee that
neither the power nor the prestige of the Federal Government would be used to control, support or influence
the kinds of prayer the American people can say -- that the people's religions must not be subjected to the
pressures of government for change each time a new political administration is elected to office. Under that
Amendment's prohibition against governmental establishment of religion, as reinforced by the provisions of the
Fourteenth Amendment, government in this country , be it state or federal, is without power to prescribe by law any
particular form of prayer which is to be used as an of
ficial prayer in carrying on any program of governmentally
sponsored religious activity.

Writing for the court, Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).

The Establishment Clause, unlike the Free Exercise Clause, does not depend upon any showing of direct
governmental compulsion and is violated by the enactment of laws which establish an ficial of religion whether those
laws operate directly to coerce nonobserving individuals or not. This is not to say
, of course, that laws officially
prescribing a particular form of religious worship do not involve coercion of such individuals. When the power ,
prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive
pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing of
ficially approved religion is plain. But the purposes
underlying the Establishment Clause go much further than that. Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the
belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion. The history of
governmentally established religion, both in England and in this country , showed that whenever government had
allied itself with one particular form of religion, the inevitable result had been that it had incurred the hatred,
disrespect and even contempt of those who held contrary beliefs. That same history showed that many people had
lost their respect for any religion that had relied upon the support of government to spread its faith. The
Establishment Clause thus stands as an expression of principle on the part of the Founders of our Constitution that
religion is too personal, too sacred, too holy , to permit its "unhallowed perversion" by a civil magistrate. Another
purpose of the Establishment Clause rested upon an awareness of the historical fact that governmentally established
religions and religious persecutions go hand in hand. The Founders knew that only a few years after the Book of
Common Prayer became the only accepted form of religious services in the established Church of England, an Act
of Uniformity was passed to compel all Englishmen to attend those services and to make it a criminalfense of to
conduct or attend religious gatherings of any other kind-- a law which was consistently flouted by dissenting religious
groups in England and which contributed to widespread persecutions of people like John Bunyan who persisted in
holding "unlawful [religious] meetings . . . to the great disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of this
kingdom . . . ." And they knew that similar persecutions had received the sanction of law in several of the colonies in
this country soon after the establishment of of ficial religions in those colonies. It was in large part to get completely
away from this sort of systematic religious persecution that the Founders brought into being our Nation, our
Constitution, and our Bill of Rights with its prohibition against any governmental establishment of religion.

Writing for the court, Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).

The Court's justification for consulting its own notions rather than following the original meaning of the Constitution,
as I would, apparently is based on the belief of the majority of the Court that for this Court to be bound by the original
meaning of the Constitution is an intolerable and debilitating evil; that our Constitution should not be 'shackled to the
political theory of a particular era,' and that to save the country from the original Constitution the Court must have
constant power to renew it and keep it abreast of this Court's more enlightened theories of what is best for our
society. It seems to me that this is an attack not only on the great value of our Constitution itself but also on the
concept of a written constitution which is to survive through the years as originally written unless changed through
the amendment process which the Framers wisely provided.

Dissenting in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966).

Citizenship is no light trifle to be jeopardized any moment Congress decides to do so under the name of one of its
general or implied grants of power.

Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 267–68 (1967).

The flagrant disregard in the courtroom of elementary standards of proper conduct should not and cannot be
tolerated. We believe trial judges confrontedwith disruptive, contumacious, stubbornly defiant defendants must be
given sufficient discretion to meet the circumstances in each case.

Illinois v. Allen, 397 U.S. 337, 343 (1970).

For me, the only correct meaning of that phrase is that our Government must proceed according to the 'law of the
land'—that is, according to written constitutional and statutory provisions as interpreted by court decisions.

On due process, dissenting inIn Re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970).

In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its
essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's
power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the
Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the
people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

Concurring in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).

The word 'security' is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental
law embodied in the First Amendment.The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of
informed representative government provides no real security… .

Concurring in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).

An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum
guarantee of the First Amendment.

Concurring in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).

In revealing the workings of government that led to the iVetnam War, the newspapers nobly did precisely
that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.

Concurring in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).
 The layman's Constitutional view is that what he likes is Constitutional and that which he doesn't like is un-
Constitutional. That about measures up the Constitutional acumen of the average person.

News conference, Washington, D.C., reported in The New York Times (February 25, 1971), p. 38.

About Black
Rarely cited by the Supreme Court today , Justice Black is generally viewed by the Court (as he was byBickel) as too
'absolutist,' too unyielding, too unresponsive to other societal needs. But the Pentagon Papers case may , even now,
best be recalled in Justice Black's opinion, the last he would write on the Court.

Floyd Abrams, Speaking Freely (2005), p. 66.

External links
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