White, Byron Raymond

▪ 2003

“Whizzer” 

      American jurist and professional football player (b. June 8, 1917, Fort Collins, Colo.—d. April 15, 2002, Denver, Colo.), served as associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1962 to 1993. White achieved early fame on the gridiron—and acquired the nickname “Whizzer”—as a speedy halfback on the University of Colorado football team. After earning his bachelor's degree in 1938, he played one season for the Pittsburgh Pirates (now the Steelers), during which he led the National Football League in rushing. He then spent a year at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar before returning to the U.S. to play two seasons with the Detroit Lions while attending Yale Law School. White graduated from Yale with a law degree in 1946. He clerked at the Supreme Court for Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson in 1946–47 and then worked as a corporate lawyer in Denver. In 1960 he was active in the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy, with whom he had forged a close friendship years earlier, and in 1961 he was named deputy attorney general under the president's brother Robert Kennedy. The following year White became President Kennedy's first appointee to the Supreme Court. On civil rights issues White was generally viewed as liberal, though on social issues he was one of the court's more conservative voices. In two notable cases during his tenure—Miranda v. Arizona (1966), which required police officers to read criminal suspects their rights, and Roe v. Wade (1973), which established the constitutional right to abortion—White cast dissenting votes. He retired in 1993 and was replaced by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

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