George Bundy Smith--a good lawyer.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Author: Feerick, John D.
• Date: 22 March 2005

As I have noted elsewhere, if I were asked to pick one moment in the legal history of the country where what ought to be came together with what is, it would be the unanimous decision of nine white men in Brown v. Board of Education dismantling the segregation of white and black children in public education. This was a watershed moment in the history of law. As Judge Robert Carter of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York has written, this decision will "always stand at the highest pinnacle of American judicial expression because in guaranteeing equality to all persons in our society as a fundamental tenet of our basic law, it espouses the loftiest values." Benjamin Cardozo, the legendary chief judge of New York, described the chief worth of the judiciary as "making audible the ideals that might otherwise be silenced ... [and] giving them continuity of life and of expression."

Unlike most lawyers, George Bundy Smith understood the importance of that decision in a very personal way. Dean William Michael Treanor of Fordham Law School has said of Judge Smith that he is "someone whose life story and whose profound and inspirational commitment to the cause of racial justice are inextricably linked with the legacy of Brown." Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Judge Smith moved with his family at an early age to the District of Columbia where he attended its public schools and experienced first hand the effects of segregation. He...