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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2016
Born: February 25, 1928, Trenton, NJ
Education: Antioch College, B.A. 1949, Yale Law School, LL.B., 1952
Died: December 14, 1998, Boston, MA
Author of award-winning books on race and the law, Higginbotham was one of the most important black attorneys and jurists of the twentieth century.
Pursuing equality, he continued the quest of William Hastie, Charles Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and “that small cadre of other lawyers associated with them, who laid the groundwork for success in the twentieth-century racial civil rights cases” (Jackson, 1998). A private and state attorney, Federal Trade commissioner, law professor, and federal judge (1964–93), writing more than 650 opinions, Higginbotham upheld “equal protection of the laws.” Finding “cruel and unusual punishment,” for example, he ordered Allegheny County, Pennsylvania (1990) to end crowding its prisoners.
After his federal retirement, he taught at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and helped litigate suits for affirmative action and diversity, congressional redistricting and minority representation, and equity to dependent families and children. In addition, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law enlisted him to be an expert witness in litigation challenging black vote dilution, job discrimination, and school resegregation. An official observer of South Africa's historic presidential election (1994), he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1995) and NAACP Spingarn Award (1996).
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