Justice Tom C. Clark
Today’s Justice of the Day is: TOM C. CLARK. Justice Clark was born on this day, September 23, in 1899.
Justice Clark was born in Dallas, Texas, the state from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He attended what is today the University of Texas at Austin, earning an A.B. in 1921, and then earned an LL.B. from the University of Texas Law School in 1922.
Immediately after graduating from law school, Justice Clark entered private practice in his home town of Dallas, but left his work as a private attorney in 1927 to begin a five-year term as Civil District Attorney of Dallas. He returned to private practice in 1932, and worked as a private attorney from then until 1937, when he became a Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States. During this time, Justice Clark’s service at the Attorney General’s office saw him briefly work at the Bureau of War Risk Litigation (from 1937 to 1938) and the Antitrust Division (from 1938 to 1943). He then became an Assistant Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice, where he would serve from 1943 until 1945, the year he took office as Attorney General. During his term of service at DOJ, Justice Clark worked in the Antitrust Division (in 1943) and then the Criminal Division (from 1943 to 1945). He ultimately went on to serve as Attorney General until his appointment to the SCUS.
Justice Clark was nominated by President Harry S. Truman on August 2, 1949, to a seat vacated by Justice Frank Murphy. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on August 18, and received his commission the following day. Justice Clark took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on August 24, and served on the Vinson and Warren Courts. He assumed senior status on June 12, 1967, and his service was terminated on June 13, 1977, due to his death.
Justice Clark is one of the least well-remembered Justices to have served on the Warren Court. While he may not have had the same profile as the almost-legendary Chief Justice Earl Warren, or leading liberals like Justices Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, or William J. Brennan, Jr., he was nonetheless a fairly important player when the SCUS’s left-leaning block needed to assemble majorities. Justice Clark joined the unanimous Opinion of the Court in Brown v. Board of Education (I) (1954), as well as the majority opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). More to the point, his vote was occasionally crucial to breaking 4-to-4 ties towards the left-leaning Members of the SCUS, especially when they failed to win over either Justices Potter Stewart (who typically played the role of swing Justice) or Byron White, or if they lost the vote of Justice Black on a non-First Amendment case (as became more and more common in the late 1960’s). After his retirement, Justice Clark continued working in the federal judiciary in many important respects, most prominently by serving as Director of the Federal Judicial Center (the agency charged with assisting the entire federal judicial department with research and training for judges and court staff) from 1968 to 1970.