At the start of the opening session of the 76th Annual Meeting on May 17, the Institute observed a moment of silence in memory of John Minor Wisdom, Senior Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and an emeritus member of the Institute’s Council. That day coincided with what would have been Judge Wisdom’s 94th birthday, but he died two days earlier, on May 15, in his native New Orleans.

A 1925 graduate of Washington and Lee University, Judge Wisdom studied English literature for a year at Harvard University and then returned to New Orleans and enrolled in Tulane University Law School, from which he graduated first in his class in 1929. With the exception of distinguished service in the army during World War II, for which he was awarded the Legion of Merit by President Truman, he practiced law in New Orleans until his 1957 appointment to the Fifth Circuit by President Eisenhower and was particularly expert in the law of trusts.

During his 42-year career on the bench, Judge Wisdom achieved renown for his landmark decisions ordering and implementing desegregation in the wake of the Supreme Court’s historic ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. During the 1960’s, despite virulent opposition, he issued opinions ordering integration at the University of Mississippi and requiring recalcitrant school boards to speed the pace of desegregation; he also joined in groundbreaking decisions that eliminated racial discrimination in jury selection and voter registration in Louisiana.

Although he took senior status in 1977, Judge Wisdom continued to sit on the Fifth Circuit until his death. In 1996 he received the American Bar Association Medal, the ABA’s highest honor, for “conspicuous service to the cause of American jurisprudence.” In announcing the award, ABA President Roberta Cooper Ramo hailed Judge Wisdom for his “courageous and significant contributions to this nation’s progress toward equality among its citizens” and described him as a “moral and intellectual leader on a court that made heroic decisions despite strong pressures from regional political leaders of the times.” Earlier, in 1993, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Clinton.

A member of the Institute since 1941, Judge Wisdom was elected to the Council in 1961 and served as an Adviser for the ALI’s Study of the Division of Jurisdiction Between State and Federal Courts, which was published in 1969. He became an emeritus member of the Council in 1980. In 1990 the Judge’s present and former law clerks celebrated his 85th birthday by endowing the Institute’s John Minor Wisdom Award, to be presented from time to time to an ALI member in specific recognition of noteworthy contributions to the work of the Institute. At the opening session in May Donald J. Rapson became the third recipient of the Wisdom Award for his outstanding contributions in the field of commercial law.