QUESTIONS:
1. In making his argument for suggesting a Supreme Court nominee from outside the lower federal courts, Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R.-Pa.) recently noted approvingly that when the court handed down its unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the justices included a former governor, three former U.S. senators, two attorneys general, a solicitor general, a professor and a veteran of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Who was the ex-governor?
2. How many of the ’54 court’s three ex-U.S. senators can you name?
3. Who were the two ex-attorneys general?
4. Actually, there were two former solicitors general on the court at the time of the Brown decision. Can you name them?
5. Which justice was a veteran of the SEC?
ANSWERS:
1. Chief Justice Earl Warren, governor of California from 1942-53.
2. Justices Hugo Black, Democratic senator from Alabama from 1926-37; Sherman Minton, Democratic senator from Indiana from 1934-40; and Harold H. Burton, Republican senator from Ohio from 1940-45.
3. Justices Tom C. Clark, attorney general from 1945-49, and Robert H. Jackson, attorney general from 1940-41.
4. Justices Jackson, solicitor general from 1938-40, and Stanley F. Reed, solicitor general from 1935-38.
5. Justice William O. Douglas, who had been chairman of the SEC from 1935 until his appointment to the court in 1939.
