Hugo Black - Legacy

Legacy

Hugo Black was twice the subject of covers of Time Magazine: On October 26, 1935 as a United State Senator; and on October 9, 1964 as a Justice (art by Robert Vickrey).

In 1986, Black appeared on the Great Americans series postage stamp issued by the United States Postal Service. Along with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. he was one of only two Associate Justices to do so until the later inclusions of Thurgood Marshall, Joseph Story, Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, and William J. Brennan, Jr. See, Justice Hugo L. Black 5¢ stamp. and Hugo L. Black, First Day Cover. In 1987, Congress passed a law sponsored by Ben Erdreich, H.R. 614, designating the new courthouse building for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama in Birmingham, as the "Hugo L. Black United States Courthouse."

An extensive collection of Black's personal, senatorial, and judicial papers is archived at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, where it is open for research.

Justice Black is honored in an exhibit in the Bounds Law Library at the University of Alabama School of Law. A special Hugo Black collection is maintained by the library.

Black served on the Supreme Court for thirty-four years, making him the fifth longest-serving Justice in Supreme Court history. He was the senior (longest serving) justice on the court for an unprecedented twenty-five years, from the death of Chief Justice Stone on April 22, 1946 to his own retirement on September 17, 1971. As the longest-serving associate justice, he was acting Chief Justice on two occasions: from Stone's death until Vinson took office on June 24, 1946; and from Vinson's death on September 8, 1953 until Warren took office on October 5, 1953. There was no interregnum between the Warren and Burger courts in 1969.