A Look Back
May 03, 2009
March 3, 190 years ago.
1819 to be exact. That's when a chap named Nathanial Pope was appointed United States Judge for the District of Illinois.
One judge was all they had and all they needed. With Illinois having just been made a state and Chicago not even incorporated, there weren't that many politicians here. So, naturally, fewer court cases.
"Chicago" happened in 1833 and things started to heat up. By Feb. 13, 1855, Congress divided the state of Illinois into judicial districts -- Northern and Southern. Not proven, but widely suspected, is that the Northern District was reserved for the intellects and the Southern for little common-law cases that no one really cared about.
The intensity of any law practice doesn't allow much time for reflection on the history or the past judges of the court. Our familiarity is reserved for those before whom we practice.
I think we unanimously agree that the present bench is the most intelligent and best-looking crop in all 190 years of the court's existence.
But as we celebrate 190, it's worth taking a few minutes to look back. Many Northern District jurists had profound impact on our nation, while others were involved in the most memorable of courtroom trials and moments. A few come to mind.
There was the Honorable Peter Stenger Grosscup, a name that just rolls off the tongue. President Harrison appointed him as the third judge of the Northern District.
In 1894, Grosscup issued the injunction against Eugene Debs and the American Railway Union to stop the Pullman Strike. Debs ignored the injunction and Grosscup had President Cleveland send in 10,000 federal troops. ("A Court That Shaped America," Richard Cahan and Marvin Aspen, Northwestern University Press 2002.) So think long and hard before you mess with those federal judges.
How about Kenesaw Mountain Landis? Most remember him as the baseball commissioner who banned eight players, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, in the Black Sox scandal of 1919.
Teddy Roosevelt appointed Judge Landis, an apparent Cubs fan, to the Northern District bench in 1905. While he presided over major antitrust actions, cases involving labor leader Big Bill Haywood and Socialism activist Victor Gerber, one decision had a major impact on another sport--boxing.
In 1908, Jack Johnson was the first black man to be crowned heavyweight champion of the world. In 1912, he was the first person to be convicted under the Mann Act, which prohibited the interstate transfer of females for immoral purposes (now called the Spitzer Act).
Landis gave him the maximum sentence under the act, a year and a day. In September 2008, Congress passed a resolution calling for a posthumous pardon. It never came.
Judge James Wilkerson succeeded Landis. He had the pleasure of dealing with a man named Capone. In the spring of 1931 the grand jury returned an indictment for tax evasion.
On June 16, Capone appeared before Wilkerson, believing he had worked out a plea for a lighter sentence. Wilkerson responded: "The parties to a criminal case may not stipulate as to the judgment to be entered," he said. "It is time for somebody to impress upon the defendant that it is utterly impossible to bargain with a federal court. Well, let's not touch that one.
Wilkerson's next famous move came at the Oct. 6, 1931, trial. He learned that Capone had bribed the jury.
So he walked into the court and said, "Judge Edwards has another trial commencing today. Go to his courtroom and bring me the entire panel of jurors. Take my entire panel to Judge Edwards." Al was fit to be tried.
Yet another milestone was reached with the appointment of Cook County Judge Walter LaBuy to the federal bench in 1944. He was Polish. And at the time, that was news.
An attorney who helped convict Capone was William Campbell.
At 35 he became the youngest appointee to the federal bench and remained there from FDR to Reagan. He was the longest serving chief judge in the history of the Northern District, overcoming his education at St. Rita. (Sorry, this is obligatory from a Brother Rice grad.) He conducted one of the few treason trials in the country in United States v. Haupt, 47 F. Supp. 832 (N.D. Ill. 1942), and oversaw construction of the Dirksen Building and Metropolitan Correctional Center.
In 1965, many thought Campbell would be Lyndon Johnson's choice for the Supreme Court. Instead it was Abe Fortas.
When asked about the missed opportunity, Campbell said, "Although I knew Johnson intimately and personally, he was bigoted enough not to want two Catholics on the Supreme Court." Justice Brennan was the other.
So much history--so little space to write about it. That's why it's better to see it on display in the second-floor meeting room of the court from March 3, 2009, until May 1, 2009, as part of the history committee's commemoration of the 190th anniversary.
Stop by. Catholics too.
