Byron White
Byron Raymond "Whizzer" White was an American lawyer, jurist, and professional football player who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1962 until 1993. By his retirement, he was the Supreme Court's only sitting Democrat and the last-living member of the progressive Warren Court.
Born and raised in a small homestead in Wellington, Colorado, White distinguished himself as a student athlete who came from a background of poor farmhands to become a consensus All-American halfback for the Colorado Buffaloes. After being the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy in 1937, he was selected in the 1938 NFL draft by the Pittsburgh Pirates for the National Football League. He led the league in rushing yards during his rookie season. White graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder as class valedictorian, attaining a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University. After World War II forced him to return to the United States, he matriculated at Yale Law School, played for the Detroit Lions in the 1940 and 1941 seasons while still enrolled, and served as an officer for the United States Navy in the Pacific Theatre.
White graduated from law school with honors in 1946 and clerked for Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson. He eschewed work for a white-shoe firm and returned to Colorado in order to enter private practice in Denver as a transactional attorney. Minor work as the Colorado state chair of John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign led to him being unexpectedly tapped in 1961 for a position as U.S. Deputy Attorney General. He was successfully nominated by Kennedy to the Supreme Court the next year, becoming the Court's first justice from Colorado.
White espoused a pragmatic and non-doctrinaire judicial approach which strengthened the powers of the federal government, advocated for the desegregation of public schools, and upheld the use of affirmative action. Though expected to be a reliably liberal justice, he was by contrast a vociferous opponent of substantive due process, penning dissents in both Miranda v. Arizona and Roe v. Wade. White wrote the majority opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick and dissented in Runyon v. McCrary and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Due to his unwillingness to align with either the liberal or conservative blocs, White was largely oriented with the Court's center.
Early life and education
White was born in Fort Collins, Colorado, on June 8, 1917. His father, A. Albert White, managed a local lumber company. His mother, Maude Elizabeth, was the daughter of German immigrants. He had one older brother, Clayton "Sam" Samuel White. Neither parent graduated high school, which was not unusual for farming communities at the time, but they instilled in their sons a heavy emphasis on education and took active roles in the local community. White and his brother were raised in the nearby town of Wellington where they attended the local high school. As a young student, White worked odd jobs to support his family during the town's decline in the 1920s; these included roles in harvesting beets, shoveling coal, and hard construction work, among other forms of manual labor. In his junior year, he and his brother rented out land and spent long hours in the fields, during which time White adopted a nearly lifelong habit of smoking.Sam, four years White's senior, became an accomplished student and athlete who graduated as valedictorian, earning a scholarship to study at the University of Colorado, where he was later elected by the university to become a Rhodes Scholar. Whereas Sam was a gregarious and socially active child, White was described as a taciturn boy who "was very quiet, measuring every single word, showing no emotion, and revealing nothing."
White excelled academically in high school, graduating in 1934 as the class valedictorian with the highest grades in the school's history. He studied diligently in order to attain a scholarship to attend college, later describing his philosophy in Wellington as "do your work and don't be late for dinner." White followed his brother's footsteps in attending the University of Colorado Boulder on the scholarship offered to all Colorado high school valedictorians, intending to go to medical school and major in chemistry. Though he joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity on campus, he stuck to a strict routine of working and studying with little to no social life. However, he would become a star athlete after playing as an All-American halfback for the Colorado Buffaloes football team, winning a series of victories to become among the most acclaimed players in the country.
In 1935, Sam White was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University. After news of his brother's success became a local sensation, White saw his brother as an inspiration and felt pressured to achieve the scholarship himself. He served as student body president his senior year, switched his major to the humanities, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and valedictorian from the University of Colorado in 1938 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics. In his last year, the Colorado Buffaloes went undefeated, and White's status as a football star earned him the moniker "Whizzer White" by the student newspaper. After months of study, White also attained the Rhodes Scholarship, deferring it for a year to play professional football before attending Hertford College.
Oxford
On January 3, 1939, White sailed to England aboard the SS Europa, arriving in Southampton on January 9, harassed by reporters wishing to see a "Yank at Oxford." Upon moving into Hertford College with the intent of studying law, he befriended the future mathematician George Piranian and was assigned with C. H. S. Fifoot as a tutor. White spent his days at Oxford tirelessly studying from day until night, becoming "the only Rhodes scholar who ever worked fourteen hours a day on his studies." During one Easter vacation, he became acquainted with Joseph P. Kennedy and future U.S. president John F. Kennedy as their father, Joseph Kennedy, was the U.S. ambassador to London. In the period of political upheaval just before the Second World War, Oxford students—Rhodes scholars especially—took an active role in international politics, with many American Rhodes scholars beckoning President Roosevelt to take action against Spanish nationalists. White, however, remained closed in the affairs of politics, rarely speaking out and becoming estranged from other students; he prioritized his studies and physique above all else.Following the end of a term, White spent a summer vacation touring France and Germany, settling down in Munich in order to study the German language and Roman law. He unexpectedly reunited with John F. Kennedy, who was on his own tour of Europe with Torbert Macdonald, and on one occasion the three were heckled by a mob who recognized their English license plates. White left Germany to return to Oxford in late August 1939. The war made it impossible for American students to continue studying at Oxford, and White chose to return to the U.S. in order to continue his legal education at Yale Law School.
Law school
Upon enrolling at Yale, White continued his previous routine of studying fourteen hours a day, taking breaks only to exercise in the gymnasium where he would frequent the basketball courts, often clashing against Yale halfback Clint Frank in pick-up games. Despite attempts by the New York Giants and other NFL teams to get him to sign back into football, White publicly repudiated his football career, telling a local newspaper that "my football playing days are over. I'm started on a law career."At the time, Yale was home to a number of legal realists who rebuked Lochner and substantive due process, and were generally scholars with an expertise in legal fields outside of constitutional law. Two of such realists—Myres S. McDougal and Arthur Corbin—had a significant influence on White early in law school. Future justice Potter Stewart, one year ahead of him at the university, remembered White as "a serious-minded, scholarly, and rather taciturn, and extremely likable young man with steel-rimmed eyeglasses."
White earned the highest grades in his first-year class and was subsequently awarded the Edgar M. Cullen Prize, an award given to the highest-achieving first-year student. During the summer, he returned to Colorado and attended summer school at the University of Colorado Law School, got an appendectomy, and became a waiter at his old fraternity. White would turn down an offer to join the editorship of the Yale Law Journal, instead taking a leave of absence to promptly return to professional football as a member of the Detroit Lions.
Professional football
White came into the National Football League with the then-Pirates in the summer of 1938 as a widely heralded college star. The $15,800 contract he had signed made White the NFL's highest-paid player. About his first game, one Pittsburgh journalist said he "looked better as an individual than the Pirates did as a team". Despite leading the NFL in rushing yards in 1938, White did not appear for the 1939 season. He would reappear for the Detroit Lions in 1940 and would again top the world of "postgraduate football" with a league-leading performance in rushing.White played a total of three NFL seasons — 33 games in all. He led the league in rushing twice during that short interval, and was elected the NFL's first team All-Pro right halfback in 1940.
World War II
At the end of 1941 Lions season, White returned to Yale to await a call to serve in the U.S. Navy after the Attack on Pearl Harbor. In May 1942, he was assigned to naval intelligence and spent weeks training at Dartmouth College and in New York City. His original intention was to join the Marine Corps, but was kept out due to being colorblind.In July 1943, White was stationed at Nouméa, New Caledonia, tasked with protecting Guadalcanal and Tulagi; he narrowly missed being assigned with John F. Kennedy, his former acquaintance who had also been stationed at Tulagi before being reassigned to the Russell Islands. During World War II, White served as an intelligence officer in the Navy, and was stationed in the Pacific Theatre. He wrote the intelligence report on the sinking of future President John F. Kennedy's PT-109. For his service, White was awarded two Bronze Star medals, and was honorably discharged as a lieutenant commander in 1945.