Charles Black (professor)
{{Short description|American legal scholar}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Charles Black
| image =
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_name = Charles Lund Black Jr.
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1915|9|22}}
| birth_place = Austin, Texas, U.S.
| death_date = {{Death date and age|2001|5|5|1915|9|22}}
| death_place = New York City, New York, U.S.
| nationality =
| other_names =
| occupation = Law professor
| years_active =
| known_for = {{Flatlist|
- Brown v. Board of Education
- Impeachment: A Handbook}}
| notable_works =
| alma_mater = University of Texas at Austin (BA, MA)
Yale University (LLB)
}}
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.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/08/nyregion/charles-l-black-jr-85-constitutional-law-expert-who-wrote-on-impeachment-dies.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm|title=Charles L. Black Jr., 85, Constitutional Law Expert Who Wrote on Impeachment, Dies|date=10 May 2001|accessdate=19 December 2012|work=The New York Times|first=Robert D.|last=McFadden}}
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 Forces as a teacher and as an associate at Davis, Polk, Wardwell, Sunderland & Kiendl.{{cite web|url=http://www.law.yale.edu/news/3330.htm |title=Memorial Service for Prof. Charles Black, Sunday, January 27 | Yale Law School |accessdate=2015-10-27 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150908012838/http://www.law.yale.edu/news/3330.htm |archivedate=2015-09-08 }} 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.{{cite web |url=http://archives.news.yale.edu/v29.n30/story9.html |title=Noted legal scholar and humanist Charles L. Black Jr. dies |work=Yale Bulletin & Calendar |date=May 18, 2001 |accessdate=December 26, 2019}}
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. Black, along with Grant Gilmore, co-authored The Law of Admiralty, an influential text on maritime law. Black's students at Yale included Hillary Clinton.{{cite web|url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2001-05-09-0105090325-story.html |title=Charles L. Black, Jr., 85 |author=Tribune news services |work=Chicago Tribune |date=May 9, 2001 |accessdate=December 26, 2019}}
An outspoken critic of the death penalty, Black also authored Capital Punishment: The Inevitability of Caprice and Mistake. Black was critical of what he called the United States' "special relationship" with Israel and stated in 1989 that he had "for a long time been outraged by Israel’s cruelly implemented disdain of Palestinian human rights, and on that account have long opposed American aid to Israel".{{Cite web |last=Black |first=Charles L. Jr.|date=September 1989 |title=Let us rethink our "special relationship" with Israel |url=http://www.mafhoum.com/press/51P13.htm |access-date=23 August 2022}}
Black was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1976.{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterB.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|accessdate=July 26, 2011}} 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. Upon his passing, Akhil Amar called Black "his hero" and said that Black "had the moral courage to go against his race, his class, his social circle".
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. 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.{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/ken-burns-why-the-african-american-history-museum-belongs-to-all-of-us/2016/09/14/934b8c3e-64b9-11e6-96c0-37533479f3f5_story.html |title=Ken Burns: Why the African American history museum belongs to all of us |author=Burns, Ken |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=September 15, 2016 |accessdate=December 26, 2019}} 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.
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 {{isbn|9780393055467|plainlink=yes}}
- 1974 – Impeachment: A Handbook
- 1981 – Decision According to Law {{isbn|9780393332308|plainlink=yes}}
- 1985 – Structure and Relationship in Constitutional Law {{isbn|9780918024442|plainlink=yes}}
- 1986 – The Humane Imagination {{isbn|9780918024435|plainlink=yes}}
- 1997 – A New Birth of Freedom: Human Rights, Named and Unnamed {{isbn|0-300-07734-3|plainlink=yes}}
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [http://writ.news.findlaw.com/lazarus/20010515.html Elegy for a heroic lawyer]
- [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3805/is_200404/ai_n9398919 Charles Black and Human Rights]
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Black, Charles L.}}
Category:American legal writers
Category:American legal scholars
Category:United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II
Category:Columbia University faculty
Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Category:Writers from Austin, Texas
Category:American scholars of constitutional law
Category:United States Army Air Forces soldiers
Category:University of Texas at Austin alumni
Category:Yale Law School alumni
Category:Yale Law School faculty
Category:Yale Sterling Professors