Noted ABA member’s rejection from the Supreme Court in 1930 still resonates today
The genesis for my latest book, Supreme Pressure: The Rejection of John J. Parker and Birth of the Modern Supreme Court Confirmation Process grew out my long-held fascination with the U.S. Supreme Court. I wanted to learn more about Parker’s 1930 rejection—a nomination that, at first glance, seemed like a political masterstroke for President Herbert Hoover.
Alarmed by Parker’s past statements as a candidate in North Carolina and a ruling he handed down as a judge on the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, labor and civil rights groups mounted a campaign against Parker that ignited fierce public debate.
The stakes were monumental; not only was control of the Supreme Court hanging in the balance, but Parker’s nomination symbolized a profound clash of ideologies, political agendas, economic doctrines and interpretations of the Constitution.
Their efforts sparked a dramatic Senate revolt, marking the first successful grassroots campaign to block a Supreme Court nominee. The battle also set precedents that guided fights over nominees who came later, including Abe Fortas in 1968, Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell in 1969 and 1970, and Robert Bork in 1987. We still see elements of the Parker fight in Supreme Court nominations today, as what was once seen as novel or unprecedented have now become built-in features of the selection process.
I also found Parker to be a highly consequential but largely forgotten figure in American jurisprudence—one whose rulings helped shape the South’s legal response to Brown v. Board of Education. He was also an active member in the American Bar Association and often used the pages of the ABA Journal to talk about issues he cared about, such as judicial reform and independence.
After his Senate rejection, John J. Parker kept himself busy. He still had his job as a federal appeals court judge and would rule on some consequential cases over the next two decades, including Briggs v. Elliott, one of the Brown v. Board of Education companion cases. His opinion that Brown only outlawed state-sanctioned segregation in public schools and did not mandate integration gave cover to officials to delay and circumvent desegregation for years, if not decades.
He was in demand as a speaker and traveled throughout the country giving speeches and talks about law, government and society. He served on the United Nations International Law Commission. He was a member and influential voice of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He was appointed to the International Military Tribunal by President Harry Truman and served as an alternate judge at the Nuremberg trials in 1945-46.
And he served in various capacities in the ABA, of which he was a member for over 30 years. He won the ABA Medal in 1943 and was a member of the council of the Section of Judicial Administration, serving as chairman in 1937-38. He also was chairman of the Special Committee on Improving the Administration of Justice—an issue of paramount importance to him. He helped establish state committees (dubbed “Parker Committees”) focused on implementing the recommendations and findings of the ABA group.
He expounded on some of these issues in the ABA Journal. For instance, in November 1930, Parker argued that “one of the great services which the profession can render to the cause of social progress is to simplify the procedure of the courts, to abolish technicalities and the cumbersome machinery which tends only to delay.”
To accomplish this, Parker proposed several radical changes, including allowing for prosecution by information instead of grand jury indictments in all but the most serious cases, and eliminating the requirement for unanimous jury verdicts, stating that three-fourths was sufficient. Defendants’ rights are sufficiently safeguarded by having an impartial trial judge who can set aside verdicts deemed to be incorrect or fraudulent and appellate judges who can vacate or overturn convictions, Parker argued.
Parker also penned numerous pieces and op-eds emphasizing the importance of having an independent judiciary.
In a January 1940 ABA Journal article, he called courts the “very keystone of the arch of our constitutional structure.” Parker argued courts must have the power to declare federal and state laws unconstitutional and should be completely divorced from politics—particularly when it came to judicial elections. “If the federal courts are thus stripped of their independence and power, our constitutional system cannot be preserved,” he maintained.
In the November 1930 piece, Parker also decried attacks on lawyers and judges, blaming “an unconscious jealousy of the men who play so large a part in the control of the state, … impatience with the rules which preserve the present institutions of society against those who would destroy them” or “lack of understanding of the nature and history of our jurisprudence and of what has been accomplished by the profession in shaping it to meet the needs of the times.”
Considering what had happened to him six months prior to the publication of that piece, Parker certainly knew what he was writing about.
Victor Li is an assistant managing editor of the ABA Journal, host of the Journal’s Legal Rebels podcast and the author of Nixon in New York: How Wall Street Helped Richard Nixon win the White House.
Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.
