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The Remarkable Legacy and Legal Journey of the Honorable Julia Cooper Mack

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The Remarkable Legacy and Legal Journey of the Honorable Julia Cooper Mack University of the District of Columbia Law Review Volume 8 Issue 1 Article 18 9-30-2004 Historical Links: The Remarkable Legacy And Legal Journey Of The Honorable Julia Cooper Mack Inez Smith Reid Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.udc.edu/udclr Part of the Courts Commons, and the Judges Commons Recommended Citation Inez Smith Reid, Historical Links: The Remarkable Legacy And Legal Journey Of The Honorable Julia Cooper Mack, 8 U.D.C. L. Rev. 303 (2004). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.udc.edu/udclr/vol8/iss1/18 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ UDC Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of the District of Columbia Law Review by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ UDC Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HISTORICAL LINKS: THE REMARKABLE LEGACY AND LEGAL JOURNEY OF THE HONORABLE JULIA COOPER MACK The Hon. Inez Smith Reid* TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION .................................................. 303 II. THE EARLY DAYS: A UNIQUE FAMILY AND COURT SYSTEM ..... 306 III. Two WINDING ROADS DESTINED TO MEET ...................... 315 IV. WAS IT A LITTLE GIRL? IN RE R.M.G .......................... 328 V. "You RAISED ME UP TO STAND ON MOUNTAINS" ................. 357 I. INTRODUCTION Surprisingly, perhaps, little attention has been paid to recording, analyzing, and safeguarding the history of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals (the DCCA) in any systematic fashion. Ironically, the DCCA, which is overshadowed by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, often is confused with that court. Laypersons and scholars alike have manifested some difficulty understanding the court system in the District of Columbia. In large measure, this difficulty is traceable to the historic functioning of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit as both a federal court and as a local court for the nation's capital until the Congress of the United States created the DCCA in the early 1970s. It is also attributable to the close relationship between federal law and District of Columbia law. Indeed, District of Columbia law often mirrors federal law since Congress generally enacted stat- utory law for the District prior to its delegation of certain legislative powers to a newly created local legislature, part of a home rule government, in 1973.1 Books have been written on the history of the federal courts of the District of Columbia, with passing references to historic, specialized local courts, such as the Juvenile * The Hon. Inez Smith Reid is a judge on the D.C. Court of Appeals. These are the first chap- ters for a book about the Honorable Julia Cooper Mack, undertaken in fulfillment of the thesis re- quirement for the University of Virginia Graduate Program for Judges. Unless otherwise noted, background information on Judge Mack comes from the author's interviews with her on April 23, 2003, April 29, 2003, May 1, 2003, and February 16, 2004. 1 Under Article I, section 8, clause 17 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress has the power "[t]o exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the Government of the United States . I..."in 1973, Congress enacted the District of Columbia Self- Government and Governmental Reorganization Act, Pub. L. No. 93-198, 87 Stat. 777 (1973), com- monly known as "the Home Rule Act." THE UNIVERSITY OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW Court. But comparable historical works on the District of Columbia courts, re- organized by the District of Columbia Court Reform and Criminal Procedure Act of 1970,2 have not yet emerged. There are, however, fragments of that his- tory located in law review articles, newspaper accounts (some of which may be described as editorial in nature, or even inaccurate), various offices in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, and the minds of judges who have served on the DCCA since 1971. The history of the DCCA is significant, not only because it emerged as a politi- cal reaction to a federal/local circuit in the nation's capital deemed to be too liberal for the more conservative members of Congress, but also because of its focus on issues confronting District of Columbia residents, and the professional, corporate, or other entities working or doing business in the nation's capital. These issues are wide-ranging-from simple and complex criminal or civil mat- ters, to issues confronting children and their families, to attorney disciplinary matters, and to a host of agency actions relating to workers' compensation, unem- ployment benefits, historic preservation and zoning, housing, local elections, and government as well as private sector employment. Often they are the same type of issues confronting different geographical areas of American society, but they may be highlighted because the District is the nation's capital, which on numer- ous occasions serves as a "laboratory" for the nation as a whole. My goal at the outset of this project was to begin to compile a history of the DCCA, its judges, and its important opinions by focusing upon a limited case study of the Honorable Julia Cooper Mack, the first African American woman to be nominated by a President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate to sit on a state-equivalent court of last resort, that is, the highest court in the state- equivalent jurisdiction. Judge Mack served on the DCCA as first an Associate Judge and then as a Senior Judge, from mid-1975 to December 2001. As my interviews with Judge Mack unfolded, however, it struck me that it was equally essential to make the historical connection between this prominent jurist- known for opinions protective of the welfare and rights of children, the poor, the criminally accused, and the home rule government of the District of Columbia- and Free Negro Aaron Revels who fought in the Revolutionary War, as well as Lewis Sheridan Leary and John Anthony Copeland, Jr., who joined forces with John Brown in an effort to free enslaved men and women and to shield runaway slaves from recapture. What is perhaps remarkable, although not surprising, about this historical link is Judge Mack's virtual silence about her historic family. Her silence is not surprising because she is a characteristically reserved person who keeps her own counsel and rarely shares personal information. The added historical dimension of my original goal in a sense enhances the thesis with which I began. Given the political environment of the nation's capital, 2 Pub. L. No. 91-358, 84 Stat. 473 (1970). The Act took effect on February 1, 1971. LEGACY AND LEGAL JOURNEY OF THE HON. JULIA COOPER MACK 305 I envisioned my thesis not as a definitive resolution but as a modest contribution to understanding whether judges of the District of Columbia's highest local court are influenced by the political whirlwinds that surround them. My thesis is that through twenty-six years of her tenure as an active and senior judge of the DCCA, Judge Julia Cooper Mack kept her own counsel, and her numerous ma- jority, concurring, and dissenting opinions were influenced neither by the exterior political world surrounding her nor by the exhortations of her DCCA colleagues. Rather, Judge Mack's approach to the resolution of legal issues, as an Associate Judge and later a Senior Judge of the DCCA, was impacted by her heritage, her quiet opposition to injustice, her deep concern for the vulnerable members of American society, and by her notions of fair play and justice, all grounded in her experiences in North Carolina and the nation's capital. For my study, I have adopted a hybrid methodology. It is not the pure ap- proach of Leonard W. Levy in his The Law of the Commonwealth and Chief Justice Shaw, which focused in part on the biography of Chief Justice Shaw, but also engaged in "the intensive analysis of major cases," and afforded a glimpse into "a selected aspect of American legal history," such as the era of the Fugitive Slave law and the early days of school segregation in Boston.3 Nor does my study concentrate on a whole body of law as it existed in a specified time period, such as William E. Nelson's treatment of the law of New York as decided by state court judges over a sixty-year period, which he described as "a monographic, historical synthesis of the century's developments in state constitutional law or in the common law."4 Neither does my study present an analysis of every single opinion-majority, concurring and dissenting-that Judge Mack has written. Perhaps my study comes closest to the Leonard Levy model, but it is by no means as comprehensive as Levy's, and it does not offer a definitive view of Judge Mack's approach to a wide range of legal issues confronting the DCCA during her twenty-six year tenure. But it does combine a biographical/case study/ general overview approach to Judge Mack and her tenure on the bench. It links the jurist to historical persons, events, and experiences that helped shape her analysis of judicial cases. It uses the case study method to examine cross-racial adoption, a social and cultural issue pertaining to the welfare of black children in need of permanent homes. And it also affords a short, general overview of Judge Mack's approach to home rule issues in the District of Columbia; to certain crimi- nal procedural issues; and to discrimination in employment, housing, and univer- sity activities.
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