On December 8, 1999, the Council adopted the following Memorial Minute and directed that it be published in The ALI Reporter:

John Minor Wisdom
Council Member, 1961-1980;
Emeritus, 1980-1999

John Minor Wisdom died in New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 15, 1999, two days before his 94th birthday and the 45th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. He served 42 years as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, transforming the South and the nation.

Judge Wisdom was born in 1905 in New Orleans, a scion of the Southern aristocracy. Many of his father’s college friends from Washington and Lee University were Confederate war veterans, and his father recalled marching in Robert E. Lee’s funeral procession in 1870. In 1921, Judge Wisdom entered his father’s alma mater and, after graduation, went to Harvard to study literature. His pursuit of the classics lasted but one year, and Judge Wisdom returned to New Orleans and enrolled in Tulane Law School, from which he graduated at the top of his class in 1929. He then founded with one of his classmates, Saul Stone, the firm of Wisdom and Stone, now Stone, Pigman, Walther, Wittmann & Hutchinson, a prominent New Orleans law firm. He practiced law in New Orleans from 1929 until 1957, and during World War II he served in the Army Air Corps and attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

Judge Wisdom served as the founding father of the Republican Party in Louisiana, a predominantly Democratic state long dominated by the politics of Huey Long. In 1952, he and Elbert P. Tuttle of Georgia, who preceded Judge Wisdom in service on the Fifth Circuit, helped organize General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidential campaign in the South. Later, President Eisenhower tapped Judge Wisdom for a circuit judgeship, and on the second such overture, Judge Wisdom accepted, taking his oath of office on July 13, 1957.

When Judge Wisdom became a judge, Brown v. Board of Education was barely three years old. The Supreme Court had ordered that the South desegregate its schools "with all deliberate speed," but left it to trial and appellate court judges in the trenches to flesh out the meaning of that command. Despite the mandate of Brown, the South remained segregated, a place of active resistance to the rule of law. Judge Wisdom and three other giants on the Fifth Circuit, John R. Brown, Richard T. Rives, and Elbert P. Tuttle, transformed the promise of Brown into reality. More often than not, Judge Wisdom was the architect and the penman of the seminal decisions that desegregated schools, universities, public accommodations, and many other aspects of Southern life and that became the foundation for several of the Supreme Court’s later opinions in the civil rights area.

But Judge Wisdom was known for much more than his civil rights decisions. He wrote masterful opinions in areas as diverse as admiralty, evidence, labor law, antitrust, and the Louisiana Civil Code. In all, he participated in the decision of more than 5000 cases and signed more than 1000 published majority opinions. And what opinions they were: in the words of Justice Brennan, "models of clarity, construction, and reasoning, display[ing] industrious and comprehensive research, and reflect[ing] a rich and well-developed background of cultural, historical, and literary frames of reference." The Renaissance man that was John Wisdom shone through on every page.

Judge Wisdom is survived by Bonnie, his wife of 67 years, to whom he was absolutely devoted. He rejoiced in her intellect and in her sparkling wit, somewhat more irreverent than his. The Judge was also an active and caring father to his son, John, Jr., and to his daughters, Penny and Kit, who survive him.

Judge Wisdom became a member of the Institute in 1941, a member of the Council in 1961, and an emeritus member of the Council in 1980. He was an Adviser to the Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure and to the Study of the Division of Jurisdiction Between State and Federal Courts. In 1990, the Executive Committee established the Institute’s John Minor Wisdom Award, endowed by his law clerks, to be presented from time to time to an Institute member in specific recognition of noteworthy contributions to the work of the Institute. The Judge was proud of his membership on the Council, and he relished attending Council meetings and the Annual Meeting. I remember him arriving for the Annual Meeting in Chicago in 1995 in a wheel chair following one of his many hip or knee replacements. Bonnie strode in with him, proudly proclaiming that, in the New Orleans patois, he had just "made 90."

Judge Wisdom received every possible honor and recognition during his lifetime of service, including six honorary law degrees, the American Bar Association Medal, the Tom C. Clark Award, the Devitt Award, and the Tulane Distinguished Alumnus Award. In 1993, President Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The Judge was a modest man and never spoke of the many honors and tributes he received during his long life. The one exception that I can remember was directed to a particularly perceptive and eloquent tribute by Justice Brennan, which appeared in a Tulane Law Review symposium on the occasion of the Judge’s 80th birthday. Judge Wisdom was very moved by Justice Brennan’s participation in the symposium. Justice Brennan’s remarks bear repeating in part here because they capture so well the John Wisdom that we all knew and respected and loved. He began with Edmund Burke’s statement that "[i]t is . . . our business . . . [t]o bring the dispositions that are lovely in private life into the service and conduct of the commonwealth." He went on to say:

Judge Wisdom certainly embodies an abundance of lovely private virtues: patrician by birth yet zealous in protection of the underprivileged; kind, compassionate, and respectful of all human beings whatever the color of their skin; utterly honest and simple of spirit; uncompromising in his intellectual integrity; possessing a zest for life that continues still — a preeminent scholar in diverse disciplines while a consummate attorney with a passion for the law. These same qualities have transfigured his public acts. "To bring these dispositions that are lovely in private life" into the service of the law — this has been the special hallmark of his entire career.

— Carolyn Dineen King