Until then, I had no idea that he and the other teachers would have lost everything if the case had gone the other way.” The journalist Nat Hentoff, who followed Brennan’s work closely, wrote that “He may have seen hardly any of the litigants before him, but he searched for a sense of them in the cases that reached him.” Now, watching the interview with Keyishian, he said: “It was the first time I had seen him. Justice Brennan watched that program and was fascinated to see the actual person behind the name on his decisions. ![]() I tracked Keyishian down and interviewed him. Justice Brennan ruled that the loyalty oath and other anti-subversive state statutes violated First Amendment protections of academic freedom. Another concerned a case he had heard back in 1967 involving a teacher named Harry Keyishian, who had been fired because he would not sign a New York State loyalty oath. My interview with him was one of 12 episodes in that series on the Constitution. How I wish he were here now - and still on the Court! That was 1987 - before the era of cyberspace and the maximum surveillance state that grows topsy-turvy with every administration. Science has done things that, as I understand it, make it possible through these drapes and those windows to get something in here that takes down what we’re talking about.” When he mentioned that modern science may be creating “a Frankenstein,” I asked, “How so?” He looked around the chamber and replied: “The very conversation we’re now having can be overheard. Although he said he never took personally the resentment and anger directed at him, he did subsequently reveal that his own mother had told him she always liked his opinions when he was on the New Jersey court but wondered, now that he was on the Supreme Court, “Why can’t you do it the same way?” His answer: “We have to discharge our responsibility to enforce the rights in favor of minorities, whatever the majority reaction may be.”Īlthough a liberal, he worried about the looming size of government. Those decisions brought a storm of protest from across the country. Sullivan in particular, the defense of a free press. I met Justice Brennan in 1987 when I was creating a series for public television called In Search of the Constitution, celebrating the bicentennial of our founding document.īy then he had served on the court longer than any of his colleagues and had written close to 500 majority opinions, many of them addressing fundamental questions of equality, voting rights, school segregation, and, in New York Times v. ![]() Thank you for that generous introduction, Michael thanks to all of you for your presence tonight and your warm welcome and thanks to the Brennan Center for honoring the legacy of Justice William Brennan by bearing witness to democracy as a way of life, requiring daily vigilance and commitment. A portion of it also appeared as an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times. ![]() Attend the Brennan Legacy Awards DinnerĪward-winning journalist Bill Moyers delivered a version of this speech at the Brennan Center’s 2013 Legacy Awards Dinner.Advance Constitutional Change Show / hide.National Task Force on Democracy Reform & the Rule of Law.Government Targeting of Minority Communities Show / hide.Campaign Finance in the Courts Show / hide.Gerrymandering & Fair Representation Show / hide.Ensure Every American Can Vote Show / hide.
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