Officeholder | Term start | President |
---|---|---|
Don McGahn | January 20, 2017 | Donald Trump |
Emmet Flood Acting | October 18, 2018 | |
Pat Cipollone | December 10, 2018 | |
Dana Remus | January 20, 2021 | Joe Biden |
Motley quietly befriended and guided younger African American women judges. Thompson who serves in the District of New Jersey, received a personal note shortly after her appointment in 1979. “She was just a very gracious person,” said Thompson , who eventually brought her law clerks to meet with Motley every year.
In perhaps her most famous case, Motley, with the backing of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, helped James Meredith gain enrollment at the University of Mississippi. Campus riots broke out when Meredith registered, killing two. Federal troops restored order.
On the bench, Motley continued to protect constitutional rights. In 1978, she upheld the right of a woman sports reporter to enter the locker rooms of professional sport teams, as male reporters did.
In 1992, the organization Just the Beginning celebrated the diversifying of the federal Judiciary. Constance Baker Motley, the first African American woman to serve as a federal judge, poses with a group of colleagues. Motley remains revered by the many judges and law clerks she mentored.
Credit: U.S. District Judge Anne Thompson. Joel Motley was a constant source of support. “He adored the ground she walked on,” Thompson said. When Constance Motley’s photo was posted on New York subway walls as part of a city education campaign, Joel Motley proudly gave copies of the poster to friends.
Constance Baker Motley was an unlikely civil rights hero. An African American who grew up near Yale University, she did not personally experience overt racism until late in high school, and as a young person she was almost totally unaware of black history.
Writing for the Court, Justice Joseph Story reversed the conviction and held the Pennsylvania law was unconstitutional, as it denied both the right of slaveholders to recover their slaves under Article IV and the Federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, which trumped the state law per the Supremacy Clause.
In error to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Federal law is superior to state law, but states do not have to use their resources to enforce federal law. Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. (16 Pet.) 539 (1842), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that ...
Five of the seven Supreme Court justices (including Story) referred to the commonly held view at the time that the Southern states in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 would not have agreed to the U.S. Constitution if the Fugitive Slave Clause had not been included. Since then historians such as Don E. Fehrenbacher have argued that there is little historical evidence for this.
Occurring under the presidency of John Tyler, Prigg v. Pennsylvania weakened the enforcement mechanisms of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 by allowing states to forbid their officials from cooperating in the return of fugitive slaves. But, by asserting federal government authority and responsibility over the area of fugitive slave return, ...
(16 Pet.) 539 (1842), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that the federal Fugitive Slave Act (1793) precluded a Pennsylvania state law that prohibited blacks from being taken out of the free state of Pennsylvania into slavery. The Court overturned the conviction ...
In a ruling on May 22, 1839, the Court of Quarter Sessions of York County convicted him of violation of the state law. Prigg appealed to the US Supreme Court on the grounds that the Pennsylvania law was not able to supersede federal law or the US Constitution; the Fugitive Slave Act and Article IV of the Constitution were in conflict with ...
Prigg and his lawyer argued that the 1788 and 1826 Pennsylvania laws were unconstitutional:
What it means to be admitted to practice before the Court. There is no higher or more powerful court in this country than the U.S. Supreme Court. For litigators, there is no greater or more elusive honor than to argue before this Court. Fortunately, you do not have to litigate your entire life in hopes that the Court might miraculously agree ...
Public seating in the Supreme Court courtroom is very limited and members of the public usually have to stand in line for hours before arguments begin at 10 a.m. Members of the bar, however, have their own section and the best view of significant Court arguments.
An impressive, framed certificate. A framed certificate of admission from the U.S. Supreme Court is the mic drop of all office decorations for lawyers.