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GAZETTE
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A G E
MARCH 1993
Irish Lawyers Admitted
to U.S. Supreme Court
At the admission ceremony of 44 Irish/American lawyers to the U.S. Supreme Court were
l-r: The Hon. Mr. Justice Anthony Hederman (Supreme Court of Ireland): Chief Justice
William H. Renquist, United States Supreme Court; and Brian P. Farren, President, Irish
Lawyers Association of New York. (Photo: James Higgins)
Some reflections on a day
when Irish lawyers were
admitted to practise in the
U.S. Supreme Court
Monday, 25 Janauary, 1993 was
quite a day in the US. Supreme
Court in Washington. The most
important event, from an Irish
perspective, was the ceremony in
which 44 Irish and Irish/American
lawyers, most of them members of
the Irish Lawyers Association of
New York, were formally admitted to
practise in the U.S. Supreme Court.
The group included two practising
Irish solicitors,
James O'Dwyer,
who
is Chairman of Arthur Cox, and
Marian Petty
of the firm Monahan
& Company of Ennis, Co. Clare. It
was a great privilege to have been
present on this occasion which was,
of course, important for those
admitted to practise but which was
also importánt - and, indeed,
historic - for other reasons.
Thurgood Marshall Tribute
The proceedings of the court opened
with a tribute from Chief Justice
William Rhenquist
to the memory of
the late Mr. Justice
Thurgood
Marshall
who had died the previous
day. Thurgood Marshall was the first
black American to have been
appointed to the U.S. Supreme
Court. In his heyday as a lawyer, he
had been a great champion of civil
rights for the black community in
the United States and had been
involved in such celebrated cases as
Brown
-v-
Board of Education of
Topeka (1954),
a landmark decision
which ended discrimination against
blacks in the educational system in
America. The Chief Justice paid a
warm, elegantly phrased tribute to
the late Justice Thurgood Marshall
who had served on the bench of the
United States Supreme Court for 24
years.
Death Penalty Judgement
The Marshall tribute was followed by
the handing down by the Court of
judgments in a number of cases. For
the most part, the judges simply gave
their decision, stating that the
rationale would be found in the
written judgment which had been
deposited with the clerk in the court.
However, in one case (
Herrera
-v-
Collins)
which concerned an appeal
by way of
habeas corpus
by the
applicant who had been sentenced to
death for murder in the State of
Texas, a very strong minority dis-
senting opinion was expressed by Mr.
Justice
Harry Blackmun
in which he
accused his colleagues in the majority,
including the Chief Justice, of
permitting judicial murder. The case,
not unnaturally, made headline news
across the United States of America.
So far as I could gather from the
recital of the facts, the applicant had
been sentenced to death for the
murder of two police officers in
Texas. He had exhausted all his
rights of appeal in the State courts
and was now making a last ditch
effort by appealing to the federal
courts by way of
habeas corpus
on the grounds that new evidence
had come to light which proved his
innocence. It seems that the new
evidence consisted of affidavits from
members of the condemned man's
family to the effect that it was not
he, but his brother, who had
committed the murders. As it
happened, his brother was,
conveniently for him, now deceased!
The majority of the court dismissed
the application on procedural
grounds of a technical nature saying
that the State courts had ample
jurisdiction to deal with questions of
new evidence and power to order a
retrial if they deemed it appropriate
and that it was not open to the
Supreme Court to grant such an
application on
habeas corpus
proceedings. In his dissenting
opinion, Justice Blackmun delivered
a scathing attack on the majority,
arguing that in capital cases the
court must respond to any new
evidence that tended to support the
innocence of the accused. While
agreeing with the substance of Mr.
Justice Blackmun's decision, the
other two dissenting judges
disassociated themselves from the
remarks which accused the majority
of judicial murder!
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