Hugo Lafayette Black (February 27, 1886 – September 25, 1971) was an American lawyer, politician, and jurist who served as a U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1927 to 1937 and as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1937 to 1971. A member of the Democratic Party and a devoted New Dealer, Black endorsed Franklin D. Roosevelt in both the 1932 and 1936 presidential elections.

Before he became a senator, Black espoused anti-Catholic views and was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. An article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that he temporarily resigned from the Klan in 1925 to bolster his senatorial campaign, before quietly rejoining in 1926. In 1937, upon being appointed to the Supreme Court, Black said: "Before becoming a Senator I dropped the Klan. I have had nothing to do with it since that time. I abandoned it. I completely discontinued any association with the organization."

Black served as the secretary of the Senate Democratic Conference and the chair of the Senate Education Committee during his decade in the Senate. Having gained a reputation in the Senate as a reformer, Black was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Roosevelt and confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 63 to 16 (six Democratic Senators and ten Republican Senators voted against him). He was the first of nine Roosevelt appointees to the court, and he outlasted all except for William O. Douglas.

The fifth longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history, Black was one of the most influential Supreme Court justices in the 20th century. He is noted for using historical evidence to support textualist arguments, his position that the liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights were imposed on the states ("incorporated") by the Fourteenth Amendment, and his absolutist stance on the First Amendment, often declaring "No law [abridging the freedom of speech] means no law." Black expanded individual rights in his opinions in cases such as Gideon v. Wainwright, Engel v. Vitale, and Wesberry v. Sanders.

Black's views were not uniformly liberal. During World War II, he wrote the majority opinion in Korematsu v. United States (1944), which upheld the internment of Japanese Americans ordered by the president Franklin Roosevelt. During the mid-1960s, Black became slightly more conservative. Black opposed the doctrine of substantive due process (the pre-1937 Supreme Court's interpretation of this concept made it impossible for the government to enact legislation that conservatives claimed interfered with the freedom of business owners),: 107–108  and believed that there was no basis in the words of the Constitution for a right to privacy, voting against finding one in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965).  241–242  He also took conservative positions in cases such as Shapiro v. Thompson, Goldberg v. Kelly, Tinker v. Des Moines, and Cohen v. California where he distinguished between "pure speech" and "expressive conduct".

Early years

Black was born in Harlan, Clay County, Alabama, on February 27, 1886, the youngest of eight children born to William Lafayette Black and Martha (Toland) Black. In 1890 the family moved to Ashland, the county seat. The family came from a Baptist background.

Black attended Ashland College, an academy located in Ashland, then enrolled at the University of Alabama School of Law. He graduated in 1906 with an LL.B. degree, was admitted to the bar, and began to practice in Ashland. In 1907, Black moved to the growing city of Birmingham, where he built a successful practice that specialized in labor law and personal injury cases.

As a consequence of his defense of an African American who was forced into a form of commercial slavery after incarceration, Black was befriended by A. O. Lane, a judge connected with the case. When Lane was elected to the Birmingham City Commission in 1911, he asked Black to serve as a police court judge – his only judicial experience prior to the Supreme Court. In 1912, Black resigned to return to practicing law full time. In 1914, he began a four-year term as the Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney.

During World War I, Black resigned to join the United States Army. He served in the 81st Field Artillery, and attained the rank of captain as the regimental adjutant. When the regiment departed for France, its commander was ordered to return to Fort Sill to organize and train another regiment, and he requested Black as his adjutant. The war ended before Black's new unit departed the United States, and he returned to law practice. He joined the Birmingham Civitan Club during this time, eventually serving as president of the group. He remained an active member throughout his life, occasionally contributing articles to Civitan publications.

In the early 1920s, Black became a member of the Robert E. Lee Klan No. 1 in Birmingham, and he resigned in 1925. In 1937, after his confirmation to the Supreme Court, it was reported he had been given a "grand passport" in 1926, granting him life membership to the Ku Klux Klan. In response to this news, Black said he had never used the passport and had not kept it. He further stated that when he resigned he completely discontinued his Klan association, that he had never resumed it, and that he expected never to resume his membership.

On February 23, 1921, he married Josephine Foster, with whom he had three children: Hugo L. Black, II (1922–2013), an attorney; Sterling Foster (1924–1996), and Martha Josephine (1933–2019). Josephine died in 1951; in 1957, Black married Elizabeth Seay DeMeritte.

Many conservatives applauded the order, arguing that he's merely empowering police to do their jobs. But police and prosecutors have plenty of tools. Similarly, this administration has mocked the constitutional process of due process, whereby the accused get their day in court. That protects the innocent more than the guilty by simply requiring the government to prove its case.

As someone who has covered police-abuse cases, I can guarantee that officers make mistakes, can be overly aggressive, and on occasion are corrupt. After the 1980s-era War on Drugs, police often have used tactics more appropriate to an occupying military force rather than to civilian police officers. If you think police should be unrestrained, get back to me after a SWAT team gets the wrong address and invades your house instead.

This is not about letting police do their jobs. Let's say a President Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom—or whichever potential Democratic politician keeps you awake at night—issued an executive order calling for the feds to "unleash high-impact" Internal Revenue Service, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, or Environmental Protection Agency officers. Would you say, "That's great, they're just cracking down on tax cheats, illegal guns, and environmental scofflaws"?

Of course not. You'd instead fear they are going to tread on the rights of honest taxpayers, legitimate gun owners, and law-abiding business owners. You'd believe the purpose of the executive order would be political. In 2023, for instance, a Republican-controlled House subcommittee called on the IRS to end "unannounced field visits" because they believed the agency was targeting conservative groups, abusing its power, and harassing ordinary citizens.

I expect this argument to fall on deaf ears, given the inconsistent positions taken by members of each political tribe. As an aside, I saw a pickup truck with a "don't tread on me" flag bumper sticker and one of those blue-striped flags symbolizing support for police. Who, exactly, does the driver think will tread on his rights? We're all supportive of police who honestly and legally use their authority to battle crime, but only the most naïve person would believe that unleashing them from legal constraints will only hobble gang-bangers and felons.

In many ways, police have already been unleashed from reasonable limits. Consider the issue of civil asset forfeiture, whereby police officers, FBI agents, and other law enforcement officials take the homes, cars, and cash of people who have never been accused of a crime. That also started with the War on Drugs. Federal officials argued that the best way to stifle criminal gangs was to take their assets.

That's a fair point, provided it's bound by normal, legal standards—i.e., forcing the government to prove an underlying crime before engaging in a taking. Unfortunately, police take what they want based on their own claims—and then force the owners to prove their innocence to reclaim their life's savings. This is what unleashing looks like in the real world.

As one of the founders of that program has argued, it "has turned into an evil itself, with the corruption it engendered among government and law enforcement coming to clearly outweigh any benefits." And that abuse only involves our property. Imagine the abuses that will result when police are free to use whatever violence they deem necessary—and when those who abuse their powers are given even more protections from accountability.

Sure, most police officers are honorable, which makes it all the more appalling to incentivize bad ones. "Bad cops are the product of bad policy," wrote Radley Balko, author of Rise of the Warrior Cop. "And policy is ultimately made by politicians. A bad system loaded with bad incentives will unfailingly produce bad cops." These Trump actions provide all the wrong incentives—and law-abiding citizens have much more to fear from them than criminals.

Project 2025 is a conservative policy initiative led by The Heritage Foundation, aiming to provide a blueprint for governance should a Republican administration take office in 2025. The checklist outlines key actions and policy shifts across various government departments, focusing on areas like economic policy, immigration, education, and federal administration.

The plan emphasizes reducing the size of the federal government, rolling back regulations, strengthening border security, and reshaping education policy to align with conservative principles. It also advocates for changes in leadership across federal agencies to ensure alignment with its agenda.