Charles Black (professor)

Charles Lund Black Jr. (September 22, 1915 – May 5, 2001) was an American scholar of constitutional law, which he taught as professor of law from 1947 to 1999. He is best known for his role in the historic Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case, as well as for his Impeachment: A Handbook, which served for many Americans as a trustworthy analysis of the law of impeachment during the Watergate scandal.[1]

Charles Black
Born
Charles Lund Black Jr.

(1915-09-22)September 22, 1915
Austin, Texas
DiedMay 5, 2001(2001-05-05) (aged 85)
New York City
Alma mater
OccupationConstitutional law
Known for

Early life and career

Born in Austin, Texas, Black graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1935 and later obtained a master's degree in English. He received his LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1943, then served in the Army Air Corps as a teacher and as an associate at Davis, Polk, Wardwell, Sunderland & Kiendl.[2] In 1947, he became a professor of law at the Columbia University Law School, where he wrote legal briefs for the successful 1954 Brown v. Board of Education suit. He also was involved in civil rights cases in the south.[3]

In 1956, he joined Yale Law School as its first Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence. He was appointed Sterling Professor of Law in 1975. During his thirty-one-year career at Yale, he wrote numerous books, including The People and the Court, Structure and Relationship in Constitutional Law, and Impeachment: A Handbook.[3] Black's students at Yale included Hillary Clinton.[4]

An outspoken critic of the death penalty, Professor Black also authored Capital Punishment: The Inevitability of Caprice and Mistake.[4] Black, along with Grant Gilmore, co-authored The Law of Admiralty, an influential text on maritime law.[3]

Black was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1976.[5] He returned to Columbia Law School in 1986, when his wife Barbara Aronstein Black became dean there. He served as adjunct professor of law until 1999.[4]

Personal life

Black began writing poetry at the age of 40, publishing three volumes, Telescopes and Islands, Owls Bay in Babylon and The Waking Passenger.[3] While a freshman at University of Texas, Black attended a performance by Louis Armstrong at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, an event that he claimed inspired his interest in race and civil rights.[6] Black, who held an annual "Armstrong Evening" at Yale until the musician's death in 1971, was featured in the 2001 Ken Burns miniseries, Jazz.[3]

Selected works
  • 1957 – The Law of Admiralty, by Grant Gilmore and Charles Black
  • 1958 – Old and New Ways in Judicial Review
  • 1960 – The People and the Court: Judicial Review in a Democracy
  • 1963 – Perspectives in Constitutional Law
  • 1963 – Telescopes & Islands. Poems
  • 1970 – The Unfinished Business of the Warren Court
  • 1974 – Capital Punishment: The Inevitability of Caprice and Mistake 9780393055467
  • 1974 – Impeachment: A Handbook
  • 1981 – Decision According to Law 9780393332308
  • 1985 – Structure and Relationship in Constitutional Law 9780918024442
  • 1986 – The Humane Imagination 9780918024435
  • 1997 – A New Birth of Freedom: Human Rights, Named and Unnamed 0-300-07734-3
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References
  1. McFadden, Robert D. (10 May 2001). "Charles L. Black Jr., 85, Constitutional Law Expert Who Wrote on Impeachment, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 December 2012.
  2. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-09-08. Retrieved 2015-10-27.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. "Noted legal scholar and humanist Charles L. Black Jr. dies". Yale Bulletin & Calendar. May 18, 2001. Retrieved December 26, 2019.
  4. Tribune news services (May 9, 2001). "Charles L. Black, Jr., 85". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved December 26, 2019.
  5. "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved July 26, 2011.
  6. Burns, Ken (September 15, 2016). "Ken Burns: Why the African American history museum belongs to all of us". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 26, 2019.
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