Brown, Henry Billings

▪ United States jurist

born March 2, 1836, South Lee, Mass., U.S.

died Sept. 4, 1913, Bronxville, N.Y.

      associate justice of the United States Supreme Court (1890–1906).

      Brown was admitted to the bar in 1860 in Detroit and the following year appointed deputy U.S. marshal there. Two years later he was named assistant U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Michigan. He served in this capacity until 1868 when, after a brief period as temporary circuit judge, he returned to private practice. By the time of his appointment as judge of the eastern district in 1875, he had become the leading authority on maritime law in the Great Lakes, and had published an important volume of admiralty case reports from the Great Lakes district.

      In 1890 Pres. Benjamin Harrison named Brown to the U.S. Supreme Court. Brown's legal attainments and hard work made a major contribution to the Court's backlog of cases at a time when its calendar was four years in arrears and the circuit court of appeals had not yet been created. His most important decision was Plessy (Plessy v. Ferguson) v. Ferguson (1896), which established the legality of segregation so long as facilities were kept “separate but equal.” This standard dominated civil rights cases until 1954, when it was overruled by the court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Among his other important decisions were a dissent in Pollock v. Farmers Loan & Trust Company, in which the income tax act of 1894 was struck down, and a controversial opinion concurring in Downes v. Bidwell (one of the Insular Cases), in which he declared that peoples of annexed territories were not entitled to constitutionally guaranteed rights and privileges.

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