The Leadership Conference Responds to Senators’ False Characterization of Justice Thurgood Marshall
The civil rights community is speaking out against attempts by some senators to distort the legacy of the late Justice Thurgood Marshall during the confirmation hearings on Solicitor General Elena Kagan’s nomination to be an associate justice on the Supreme Court.
Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said:
“The Leadership Conference is deeply troubled by the statements this week of several Senate Judiciary Committee members that have deliberately distorted the honorable legacy of the late Justice Thurgood Marshall. Throughout his career as a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, as solicitor general, as a federal Circuit Court judge, and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, Marshall worked tirelessly to ensure that our laws aligned with the core values of our Constitution, particularly the guarantee of equal protection for all.
Due to Marshall’s legal brilliance and courage, doors that were once locked to millions of Americans are now open and pathways to education, employment, housing and other essential elements of the American Dream are now available. As General Kagan, his former law clerk, testified, Marshall also wisely believed that our judicial system should “make sure that even when people have no place else to go they can come to the courts and the courts will hear their claims fairly.”
More than half a century after he argued and won Brown v. Board of Education and helped to bury Jim Crow, it is inconceivable that anyone could view Marshall’s judicial philosophy as anything less than mainstream.”
Other responses: