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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview B-0050, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Naomi Elizabeth Morris was born in 1921 in Wilson, North Carolina. Having grown up with a strong mother as a role model and with family expectations to excel in school, Morris attended Atlantic Christian College (now Barton College) from 1939 to 1943, earning her degree in English. The summer after her graduation from college, Morris lived in Washington, D.C., with several of her sorority sisters. There they worked for the war effort with the Signal Corps, coding and decoding messages. The death of her father brought Morris back to Wilson that same year. After moving in with her mother, Morris began to work as a legal secretary for William Lucas at the Lucas & Rand law firm. She excelled at her tasks there, and in 1952, Lucas recommended her for the School of Law at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Morris describes what it was like to be one of the only women attending law school at UNC during the mid-1950s. Following her graduation in 1955, Morris returned to Wilson to work for the Lucas & Rand law firm, where she quickly became a partner by 1957. In the 1960s, Morris became increasingly involved in politics, campaigning for Governor Dan Moore. In 1967, Moore nominated Morris to become one of the founding members of the North Carolina Court of Appeals. Morris describes in detail what it was like to serve on the Court of Appeals from the late 1960s into the early 1980s, and she offers her thoughts on the role of law and the judiciary in politics.
Naomi Elizabeth Morris grew up in Wilson, North Carolina, during the 1920s and 1930s. After graduating from college in the early 1940s, she worked as a legal secretary before attending the School of Law at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. One of the only women to graduate with her class in 1955, Morris practiced law for twelve years before becoming one of the original judges to serve on the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Judge Morris, the first thing that I was thinking it would be interesting to talk about, as we sit here this afternoon three weeks before your birthday, are your father and your mother. You're the daughter of Blanche Beatrix Boyce, and I thought it would be interesting if you could just think for a little while out loud about her, the kind of woman that she was. I'm interested in how old she was when she had you, what kind of a person she is, if you think that you're like her in certain ways. Tell me about her.
Mother was a schoolteacher, and she was twenty-nine years old when I was
born. She was born in Edenton, North Carolina. Her father was a farmer,
and she left Edenton in 1914, I believe it was, to go to college, and
she only returned there for visits after that. She taught in the county
for a while and then went to Spring Hope, North Carolina, to teach, and
that's where she met my father. At that time, Spring Hope had a tobacco
market, and my grandfather was in the tobacco business—he had two
tobacco warehouses in Spring Hope—and my father was in business with my
grandfather. Mother was teaching there, and they met and were married
just before my father went across the waters to fight in the First World
War. After he came back from France, the market in Spring Hope was
closed a few years thereafter, and they moved to Wilson. I was born in
1921, and they moved to Wilson when I was less than a year old, so the
market in Spring Hope was closed, apparently, in 1920 or '21. They moved
to Wilson, and my father continued with the tobacco business. He was
with Center Brick Warehouse for a while. Mother did not teach anymore
after she was married. She felt that it was necessary for her to be at
home with my sister and me, and we were very pleased that she didn't
teach. But at the time of the Depression, things were
Where would you have your lessons, at the kitchen table?
I don't remember that. In the living room, I guess. We had a big library
table; I guess it was there. At any rate, she was an excellent teacher.
Of course, I knew how to read. She had taught me to read before I was
six. But we had a grand time, and I had sort of learned along with my
sister, who was one year ahead of me in school. She taught me, and I
entered school in the first grade in January, and at the end I was up
with the class. In fact, I was a tad ahead of them, so Mother always
told me. At any rate, at the end of the year they wanted me to skip a
year, and my mother wouldn't let me, and I'm so grateful that she
didn't, because I was small and the youngest one in the class anyhow.
She felt that it would not be in my best interest to skip a grade, and
she was absolutely right. I went on in the second grade,
You spent many years with her. That has so impressed me.
Oh, yes. My father died in '43, very suddenly. He was only fifty years old. I had just finished college and had gone to Washington to work. My sister was working in Burlington. We thought that Mother was too old to stay by herself. She never, bless her heart, said a word. We conferred about which one would come home and stay with Mother, because she was getting along in years and couldn't stay by herself. She never fussed; she never chastised us for thinking that she was that old. She understood that we were young, and we thought she was old. We decided that I would come back, because my sister was getting ready to get married, and we figured it would be better for me to come on home and stay with Mother, so I did, and we had a wonderful relationship for the balance of her life.
Unusual, probably, in that it was over such a long period of time.
Possibly. I don't know. We saw things the same way.
Do you look like her?
According to her family, I look as though she spit me out, and I think I
do. When I go down to Edenton, I can walk along the street, and
somebody'll stop me and say, "You're Blanche's daughter." In New York
one time, I was down in Chinatown and went in a little shop, and I was
coming out and a lady was coming in, and she looked at me rather
strangely and then stopped me as I started out and said, "Pardon me, but
do you by any chance know anybody named Blanche Boyce?"
What did your mother think about you going into law?
She let me make the decision. She said, "If you think you'd be interested in it, if you think that's what you'd like to do, go ahead, but you have to recognize that it's a sizeable challenge. You haven't been to school for quite a while, and just be certain that that's what you want to do for the rest of your life." After I made up my mind, she was all for it, very cooperative and supportive.
Talk about your father.
My father was a young man in a large family. He was the oldest in a family of seven children. All those children were reared at a time when my grandfather was affluent, and they were all reared not to work a great deal. I expect my father was reared to work more than any of the rest of them. A very attractive bunch of people. They took my mother in as though she were a member of the family.
Where did they meet?
In Spring Hope.
How?
Oh, I don't know how. Mother was teaching. She and her best friend roomed together and had for years. They taught together. Since they'd been teaching, they'd been rooming together and teaching in the same place. Her name was Nell. Nell was dating my father, and Mother was dating Bill Edwards. After a while they switched, and Mother married Daddy, and Nell married Bill Edwards. But I don't know how they met. I have no idea, never have been told. But my grandparents sort of let the children do about what they wanted to, and most of them didn't develop much of a sense of responsibility. Most attractive people, but my father and the brother next to him and then the next sister, I think the older ones developed more responsibility than the younger ones. At any rate, all of them loved my mother, and they called her "Sister Blanche." Now everybody in my father's family was "Sister Something," the girls. The oldest sister was "Big Sister"; the youngest sister was "Little Sister"; Mother was "Sister Blanche", and for some reason they called me "Sis".
They did. I remember hearing a story that your daddy called you "Sis".
It was just the way that family did things. My father was a large man, a very handsome man, I think. He was in the tobacco business for years. He carried the clip.
What does that mean?
You don't know anything about the selling of tobacco, but in the auction
system of selling tobacco, the piles of tobacco are spread out in
straight rows in the warehouse, and they're ticketed with the owner's
name and the number of pounds of tobacco in that pile. Then the
auctioneer goes along the row and sells those piles of tobacco.
She was stricter?
Probably, although they sort of worked together. If we went to Daddy
after Mother had said no, he would always say, "What did your mother
say?" and he'd always back her up. He never spanked me; he did my sister
one time. But, as I say, he was a large man; his hands were large. He
and Mother were going to a movie one night,
And that letter was shortly before he died, evidently.
Uh-huh. When he died, I was coming home that weekend. I was crazy about watermelon. He had gone out and gotten a watermelon and had taken it out to the icehouse to get it good and cool, so it'd be there cold when I came home. I never could eat that watermelon. I just couldn't quite make myself eat it. And for oh, I guess, a month after he died, I'd still put a place at the table for him, because it was so sudden and he was so young. But he was quite a guy. Both my parents were, in my opinion, special people.
Talk a little bit about Ruth. She was the only sibling.
Mm-hm, my only sister. Well, when we were growing up, she was thirteen
months older than I, and she sort of looked after me. We'd fight like
cats and dogs, but she'd look after me. I remember one time—or she tells
me about it; I don't know that I remember it so much as her telling me
about it—I went to school without my lunch money, and she ran all the
way back home to get it for me. And I do remember this: I would go
through the line at lunchtime, and I would have ice cream and cake.
She'd be standing at the end of the line, and she'd say, "Take it right
back."
Did she also go to school at Atlantic Christian?
No, she went to work. She didn't want to go to school. She finished high school and took a job and didn't want to go to college. She could have gone if she'd wanted to, but she didn't want to.
Did she have ideas about what you were doing in school and afterwards with the law and so forth?
What do you mean by that?
In other words, as things were happening in your life with
Oh, yes. Yes, indeed, all the way.
In a certain kind of way, were you more ambitious than she?
I don't know. She was expert in her field. She did secretarial and
bookkeeping work. She was quite, quite good and always has been at
whatever she decided to do. She's very good. She now runs a little
interior decorating business in Valdosta. She's always been able to do
whatever she wanted to do. She just had different directions for her
life. I think she knew that she was going to marry, and she didn't see
any point in going to college. And it hasn't been necessary for her.
She's gotten along splendidly without it. They were married right after
the War. Her husband was drafted when he was in his second year of
college. She joined him when they were married, in California. He stayed
in the service after the War was over, because he had had only two years
of college, and by that time he had a family. He knew he could, of
course, come back and get
With her business.
With her business, and she's been president of the wives' club at most every base they've been, so she apparently has superior administrative abilities. At any rate, I think whatever she does is fine.
I'm sure she says the same about you.
Probably.
Let's talk a little bit about when you were in school. You graduated from high school in 1939, I believe. That put you going through high school during the Depression. What about that?
Well, you know, I've talked about it with some of my friends since then.
We didn't realize that we were in a poor financial situation, because
everybody was in the same boat. I remember when we were children, we
lived on the corner. The yard was very large, and all the children in
the neighborhood would come down and play on our yard after dinner.
Daddy would always give us money to go get ice cream. There was an ice
cream parlor up the street, at which you could get a lot of ice cream
for a nickel. He would always give us a quarter to go get ice cream, and
that was a sufficient amount for all of us. One night I went to him to
get the quarter to go get the ice cream, and he said, "How about a
nickel, Sis?" I said, "Well, why?" He said, "Well, there's a Depression
on," so I immediately learned that "Depression" meant when you asked for
a quarter, you got a nickel, if you were lucky. But we were all in the
same boat; everybody was in the same boat. A friend was telling me the
other day that she remembered when they had lost their house, and they
had gone to live with her grandparents in another section of town. She
had gone to bed,
Could you walk to high school?
Of course I could, and did. I got carried when it was raining. My last year in high school and at least two years in college, we lived out sort of in the suburbs at that time. I guess it was possibly a good three or four or five miles to the college, and I walked. I didn't mind walking. I got the car when I needed it, but there was no problem; I walked to school. Everybody else did. Why not? But it would be unheard of now. I guess it would be called child abuse or something of that sort.
By some. Probably not by all.
I don't think it hurt me. In fact, I know it didn't.
All the time coming through high school, did you know you wanted to go to college?
Oh, I knew I would go to college. I didn't have any choice, I think. That was it.
Why?
Because my parents would have wanted me to. It would not have occurred to me to say, "I'm not going."
But that wasn't true of Ruth.
No. Ruth has a good mind. Don't misunderstand me. She
And there were no bad feelings.
Oh, no, not at all. He just knew his children.
And you each were comfortable with yourselves.
Yes. He knew if he told me to try for better, I'd do it, but he also knew that Ruth was going to do about what she could to get by, and that was it.
Did you always know that you would go to that school?
No, I had enrolled in Woman's College.
In Greensboro?
Uh-huh. And it wasn't till about two weeks before I was supposed to leave that Mother and I were sitting down talking about it one day, and she said, "Would you have any problem about going to Atlantic Christian?" I said, "No, of course not." She said, "Well, I just don't believe we can swing it financially for you to go to Woman's College this year. How about going over to Atlantic Christian and then transfer?" I said, "Fine. It's all right with me." So I went to Atlantic Christian, and I never wanted to leave. It never occurred to me to transfer.
I don't know much about that school, but I know that you
Yes, I'm on the Board of Trustees. Yes, it's a good school. It's a small school but a very good school. It has a good faculty, and, because it's small, the faculty has been able to take a personal interest in the students. It's a good school, a very good school.
Is it a religious-affiliated school?
Yes, it's a church-related school. It's affiliated with what we used to call the Christian Church. I'm not sure I know the name of it now. I think it's called the Disciples of Christ now.
Now that we're just sort of leaving high school and entering college, when you think back to either high school or college, are there teachers that to this day you remember because they made a difference for you . . .
Oh, yes, indeed.
. . . in how you thought about yourself or what you knew you might want to do or in whatever ways? What about high school?
The teacher whom I remember most vividly from high school is Jessie Brooks. She's now Jessie Brooks Reade and lives in Vass, and I see her occasionally. She and an English teacher I had in Atlantic Christian are the two best teachers I've ever had, except for my mother. Marvelous teachers, both of them.
What did they teach?
English. I guess Jessie Brooks was the best English teacher the state's
ever had, in my opinion, for high school. At any rate, the students who
went through her English courses did not have to take freshman English
at Carolina. She had certain requirements, and if you didn't meet them,
you didn't pass. It didn't make any
Did you get to know her pretty well?
Oh, yes. You see, teachers used to visit in the homes in those days. They came to see my mother regularly.
Your high school teachers.
Yes. Of course they did. They went to see everybody's mother and told them how we were doing. So they were friends, and we got to be good friends. She had no objection to our going by and seeing her after school or anytime we wanted to. She was very friendly with the students.
Was there anything in high school that you were not good at? I remember reading at one point that singing was . . .
No, I can't sing. No, no, I can't sing.
But generally, athletics and writing and . . .
Yes, I enjoyed all of that.
And you did a lot of it.
I like to try to sing, but I can't. It doesn't come out right.
And into college, what teacher there?
Her name was Dr. Hartsock; she's dead now. She was the head of the English Department, and she was a marvelous teacher. She taught you how to think. She knew her subject matter so well, you couldn't fool her. She knew what you were capable of doing. For all of her English majors, she was the sort of teacher who could make them come pretty close to doing what they were capable of doing. And they didn't realize they were being made to do it. They did it because they had such tremendous respect for her. She was a different sort of teacher. The strange thing is, I almost lost her to the college, because when she came to town, Dr. Hilley, who was then the President. . . . I was working for him, for twenty-five cents an hour, by the way.
How did you get that job? I wondered how you happened to get to work for the President.
He asked me. When Mother went over to ask him, since it was so late,
whether there was any possibility that I could get in school that late,
he said, "Oh, yes, I'll be glad to take her." He turned around to me and
said, "Do you want to work?" and I said, "Sure." He said, "What can you
do?" I said, "Whatever you want me to do." He said, "Can you take
shorthand?" I said, "Yes." He said,
Oh, my goodness.
But she did. She came, fortunately, and if she hadn't it would have been my fault that she didn't.
Your favorite teacher.
Turned out to be my favorite teacher.
When you were in college, at that point when one starts to think about graduating from college, what at that point were you thinking you would do next?
You see, that was during the War, and I went to Washington to work to
help win the War. Several of us did, my sorority sisters, and we had an
apartment up there. They went earlier than I. I came in June; they went
up in December. We had planned that from the beginning of our senior
year. We knew we were going up there. Had
And you were in a sorority.
Oh, yes, sure.
Was that an important part of your college
Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. I loved my sorority. I still see my sorority sisters fairly regularly, some of them. One lives in California, but we correspond, and every once in a while she'll call me. We were a very close group.
What was the name of the sorority?
Delta Sigma.
That's interesting. And did you just want that sorority, or did you consider others?
You got a bid, and I got a bid to two sororities, and I chose Delta Sigma. I liked the girls in it. It had a fun group in it, and the scholastic record was good, too. The other sorority into which I was invited had a higher scholastic record, but they didn't have as good a time.
And you were living at home while you were in college.
Mm-hm. I'd stay over at the college most of the time, but I lived at
home, supposedly. I studied, when I studied, in the dining room at the
dining room table. Mother told my daddy one time
What did that mean?
That meant that I was never at home. The only way the lightbulb would do any good was to put it in my pocket and take it with me.
I think maybe what we'll do is stop with this, and what I'd like to do the next time is . . .
I'll finish my cooking.
. . . start up with Washington, D.C. You were there for how many months? Not many.
Mn-mm. From June until August, when my father died.
So basically a summer in Washington. That's where we'll pick up the next time.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Judge Morris, we're taking these first couple of sessions to talk about
those years of your life before you became a judge, and I figured out
that those were forty-six years. We ended our last time just before you
graduated from Atlantic Christian College in 1943, and we're going to
begin today with that time when you left to go to Washington, D.C. But I
realized before we leave Atlantic Christian that there are a couple of
things I was interested in about your life there. I know that you
majored in English, but I
A lot of things. I was involved in athletics. I played tennis. I belonged to a sorority, and the sorority always had something going. The boy whom I dated belonged to a fraternity, and they always had a lot of parties. I was interested in student government and was on the student council.
Did you hold an office?
Yes, I think I was vice. . . . I'm not sure.
I think you were vice-president. That's what I read.
I ran for president of the student body at one time, and there was a tie
vote, and it had to be run again. Howard Blake won that time. I spent a
lot of time at the dormitory with some friends who lived in the
dormitory. I was a
How many students were there?
When I was there, I really don't know. Possibly five or six hundred, something like that.
A fairly small school.
Yes, it was very small. It's not but 1,600 now.
Is it true that while you were in college, or was it before college, that you had thought of going into journalism?
I think that was high school. I'm not sure, but I believe
What changed your mind from journalism?
Josephus Daniels.
How?
He was Editor of the News and Observer, and I came up
here and asked him for a job. He said he didn't think I ought to go into
journalism, because he didn't think that the compensation was adequate,
and he just didn't think I ought to have any interest in it. And I
believed every word he said, so I just came home and thought, "Well, I
won't go into journalism."
Interesting. You don't regret that.
No. He was right. At that time, journalism was not really the place for a young lady.
Tell me about this plan in college to go to Washington. You said last time that you and five sorority sisters decided you wanted to do that.
Mm-hm. A lot of people did; it wasn't only our group. A good many of the
girls in the senior class went to Washington to work. The boys were
being drafted right out from college. Every week or two, three or four
boys would leave the campus. When we were graduating, most of us already
had jobs. One friend of mine went to Hampton, Virginia, to work in
something having to do with aerospace design. I went to Washington, and
five of my sorority sisters went with me. Two of them had already gone
ahead of us. They finished in December at the end of the first semester,
and they
That took a lot of training, to learn to do that?
Not a great deal. As was always true with the government, those who majored in Spanish were put not in the Spanish section but probably in the Italian section; those who majored in French were put in a section completely foreign to what they were trained to do. In fact, a French professor at the college went up there and worked, and she, I think, was in the Spanish section. I'm not sure, but anyway not the language with which she was trained. I was put in the Japanese section. Of course, I knew nothing about Japanese. I didn't need to, the way that we worked, the system that had been devised for breaking codes. We were successful. It was very interesting.
It must have been. And you were there for how long?
Just a few months. I went up there in June. My father died the last day of July. I went back up there and worked for a while and came home, I'm not sure when. It was sometime at the end of the summer when I resigned and came home, so I wans't up there but about three or four months.
Am I right that that was perhaps your first time to live away from home?
Oh, indeed it was. I'd never lived away from home before.
Do you remember that as quite an adventure, to be in Washington with your sorority sisters?
Oh, yes, I did, it was quite an adventure. None of us
What about the decision to leave Washington and go back home after your dad died?
It was a decision that my sister and I made. As I said, she was planning
to be married. Her husband-to-be was in service, and as soon as he could
get some time off, they would be married. They had planned to be married
in September, but after my father died they called it off and delayed
it. He was waiting for a time when he could get enough time away from
them to be married. My sister and I talked the situation over, and we
decided that Mother was simply too old to be left alone. She was fifty
years old, but we thought she was very old, and we decided one of us
needed to come home and stay with her for a while, at least until things
calmed down. My father died very suddenly, and so it was a very severe
shock to her, and she wouldn't be alone. Bless her heart, she never said
a word to us about how stupid we were to feel that she was incapable of
looking after herself at age fifty. We decided that I should come home,
and
And yet you stayed. It didn't occur to you that since she was all right, you might go back to Washington.
Oh, I didn't want to go back to Washington. I was perfectly happy where I was.
What was the first job you got when you got back home to Wilson?
I went with Branch Banking and Trust Company as secretary to the vice-president and then left there and went to work for a lawyer and from there to the firm with which I later became associated and later became a partner.
How did you meet Mr. Lucas?
Another thing I did while I was at Atlantic Christian, I worked a good
bit. Mr. Lucas was a leading lawyer there in Wilson, and he had a very
important anti-trust case in which he needed some secretarial help. He
called the college and asked Dr. Hilley, the President, if there was
anybody he could send up there to help him, so Dr. Hilley asked me if
I'd like to do that, and I told him I would. I went up to the law
offices and helped him at night and on weekends with that case, clerical
work, secretarial work, and became very interested in legal work. When I
came back from Washington, I went there first to see if there was
anything available, and they didn't have an opening at that time, but as
soon as they did have one they
Is Mr. Lucas still living?
No, he died the year I came on the courts. He died in December of that year. In fact, both my senior partners died that year.
What was it like to be a secretary with that firm? What were the things that you were involved with during those years?
Oh, whatever a secretary is always involved with: taking dictation, filing, running the office, making appointments for Mr. Lucas, seeing that he got where he was supposed to be and had the papers with him that he was supposed to have, seeing that his letters got out letter-perfect and that the pleadings and court papers that were filed were letter-perfect. Sort of an executive secretary.
And yet somehow from his observation of you doing those duties, it became clear to him that you should go study law yourself?
He allowed me a good bit of freedom and assigned me tasks that were probably more than an ordinary secretary did, but a good legal secretary does a lot of things that an ordinary secretary doesn't do. A lot of people think that a paralegal does things that a secretary can't do, but that isn't true; a good legal secretary does more than some paralegals can do. It depends on who's training the secretary and how much work they allow them to do on their own. I got so that I could prepare a deed without any assistance. So long as I knew the parties, it was an ordinary deed. And the same was true with a deed of trust, but they never went out of the office without his checking them very carefully. I closed loans, and things of that sort, what a good legal secretary would do.
Was it a surprise to you, and did it come up just once or many times, that he thought perhaps you ought to try and go to law school yourself?
No, it was a surprise. That's the only time he ever mentioned it.
That one time.
Mm-hm.
I know that perhaps some people who have read about you know that story, but I'd love you to tell it, about how you knew that it was in his mind.
He called me in to give me dictation one morning, and after he'd finished the usual legal work and dictation, he started a letter to Albert Coates, who was a professor at Carolina at the time. He told him that he was sending me up for an interview, that he wanted me to go to law school and that Mr. Lucas thought Mr. Coates would find me an apt student, and that he would make an appointment, and I would bring the letter when I came. I told him I just couldn't afford to go to law school, and he said, "You can't afford not to go to law school." That was in the letter. So I went to law school.
And how were you able to afford to go? Did you have to work your way through?
I borrowed money and worked during the summertime and had a scholarship
and worked on the Law Review and got paid for that.
There are lots of ways. You don't have to have money to go to school. If
you want to go to school, you can go.
That's true. I know that myself. I'm very interested in
I lived in the dormitory. I went home most every weekend. I had my own car.
What dorm was that?
Kenan.
So your mother stayed in Wilson while you came here to school.
Mm-hm.
Was it true then, as it is now, that you had no choice in your first year, you took what all the first-year students took?
I guess so. I don't really remember.
And you were the only woman in your class?
No, I started out with another woman in the class, but she dropped out. Then I think in my third year, I believe it was, Jean Owen, who had started out after I did, caught up with the class by taking heavier loads and going to summer school and so forth. I believe that she was with us for graduation. I'm not sure. She didn't start in our class, but I believe she ended with it. But the only woman who started in the class with me dropped out.
In your entering class in 1952, how many people were in there?
I don't have any idea.
You don't remember if it was a large group?
At that time it probably was, but it would not be by today's standards.
Now I just don't know how many people were in Yackety-Yack's over there; you can count
them and find out.
In 1952, when you were the only woman in your class, you were thirty-one years old, starting school with these men.
Mm-hm. I was about nine to ten years older than the rest of them, except for one man who had already retired. He was past sixty-five, Milton Loomis. He had been a dean at a school in New York. I don't know which school, but he had retired and come to law school.
Did he finish?
Oh, yes, he finished. He came to Chapel Hill because the medical school was available. He had a heart problem. But he finished law school and did very well. He didn't take the bar, but worked in a bank in the trust department.
But your memories of those three years with those classmates are happy ones.
Oh, yes, they were delightful.
In other words, as the only woman and older than so many of them, you didn't feel left out or that they had nothing to do with you?
Oh, no, they included me in everything they did, except they didn't let me play football. They put me up as playing left out when they put up a football squad. But they were very fine. I enjoyed it. Every one of them were just as nice as they could be.
The other question that comes to my mind: you did so well in law school; you graduated fourth in your class. Would you say, as you look back, that those courses and the study of law just came naturally to you, or was it a real struggle?
I worked hard. I had not had to work hard in my prior educational
experiences, not very hard. I had in some instances. At college I was
graduated summa cum laude, but in those days you were
exempt from exams if you made a certain grade, so I had never taken a
great many exams and didn't know too much about them. When I started in
law school, they gave trial exams.
They still do.
Which I think is very, very helpful, because you don't get but one grade, and that's what you get on the exam. The mid-semester trial exams were a revelation to me, because I got a C on Torts, and it was the first time I'd ever had a C in my life. So I decided I'd better go home, get back and buckle down and get to work. I did. I think probably I went to law school with the feeling that, having been in a law office for eight or nine years, I probably had a good background and wouldn't have to work too hard, but it was a different situation. Law school was teaching theory, and what I'd had was practice, so I had to get to work and did get to work and enjoyed it. I buckled down and studied harder than I'd ever studied in my life, but enjoyed it.
And at law school also, you had other activities besides your studies,
because you had the Law Review?
Mm-hm. At that time, you only wrote Law Review notes if
you were asked to write them, and you were only asked to write them if
your grade was a certain thing. I was asked to write a Law
Review note at the end of my first year, and I came back early
in the fall of my second year to work on that Law
Review note, and then became an associate editor of the Law Review, so that took up a lot of time in the third
year. There was always something going on other than law
The first woman associate editor of that Law
Review.
Probably so. I just don't know about that.
Then that, also, could not have been something that anyone made you feel odd about, or that you had to prove something.
Oh, heavens, no. I didn't even know there hadn't been another woman, if there hadn't been.
The first woman associate editor is what you are.
I didn't know that, but it didn't matter. I wasn't out trying to prove anything.
And you didn't have to feel that you had to at the time.
Oh, heavens, no. No, indeed, which may be why the men accepted me. I don't know. I never thought about it. But I wasn't trying to prove anything. I didn't have any axe to grind, no banners that I was carrying and waving wildly. I was just studying law.
You hear much more about that today, about women in the law school classes and their awareness of the men or having to do as well as they and so forth. It just seems to be more of an issue, perhaps, between the years when you were there and when I've been there.
It's sort of ridiculous, isn't it?
The way you talk about it, yes, it seems like a waste of time.
It is.
Good energy that could have gone elsewhere.
To doing what you're training yourself to do.
Yeah, exactly.
Do you remember, and are you in touch with, some of your classmates from your law school days?
Oh, yes, indeed. We get together regularly. Some of them live here. Jack Horner, for example, lives here in Raleigh, and so does Kent Burns. Lots of them live here in Raleigh. Some work with the state, and some are in private practice. Some are in Greensboro; some are in Winston; one in Florida; one in Masscchusetts. But we correspond and get together occasionally.
How about the sorority sisters?
Oh, we correspond.
The Washington, D.C. group.
We talk to each other. One's in California. We talk by telephone occasionally.
1955: graduation and back home. What was your understanding with those people in Wilson about job prospects after you graduated?
Oh, well, they told me that if I did well, I could come back to the firm, but if I didn't do well, I could go elsewhere.
So you did okay.
Mm-hm.
And went right back. So that's fall of '55 you started with them.
Right. As soon as I finished the bar exam, I went to work.
And so that was your first time to do real lawyering.
Mm-hm.
What about that? One thing that occurred to me was whether it was a
difference that you were very aware of, to go back to that firm as an
associate, having been their secretary, and if you were working with the
same people but in such a different role, or was it
I was working with the same people, but it was no problem. Not really. If there was any problem there, I wasn't aware of it.
I've heard many people tell me that I should do my best to get through law school, but that what I'm studying in my case books isn't really that. . . . In other words, I just have to do it when I get out to really understand what it's about. The relationship between what you'd studied and actually practicing law. Did you find that you . . .
It wasn't as difficult for me, because I had known about the practice of law, you see, but I know it's difficult for people who haven't had that experience. As I say, the law school teaches theory, and I got very upset about that the first semester I was there. I went home one weekend, I remember, and I told Mr. Lucas that they weren't teaching the students the practical aspects of the law. He said, "Well, they're not supposed to. The law schools are for teaching theory, and you learn the practice after you get out. You go on back up there and learn everything they teach you about the theory of law, and when you get back here I'll teach you how to practice law," which he did. But a lot of people didn't have that privilege. I knew, for example, where you went to get revenue stamps. A lot of students, after they'd been graduated and had taken the bar, had no idea where to go to buy revenue stamps to put on a deed, and it was very embarrassing to them to have to ask. Now they have a practical skills course that people take, they won't have that problem. But I think it's correct, that law schools ought to teach the theory of the law and not the practice of it.
What are your recollections about what you enjoyed most in practicing law?
I enjoyed all of it. I did not enjoy, particularly, domestic relations cases, but I had to do them. It would not be my choice. If I had my choice, I would exclude domestic relations cases, but they're there, and in a small town you do everything.
Did you have many opportunities for trial work?
Yes. Our firm did a lot of trial work.
And you enjoyed doing that.
Yes.
One story that I encountered which struck me with interest as something that I'd love to hear you talk more about was, you alluded to one experience you had in helping to do the legal background work for the founding of the first or only home for indigent blacks in Wilson.
Not indigent blacks. No, this was a nursing home for blacks. The office
had had this woman as a client for many years. She ran a restaurant at
one time. She was quite an aggressive, hardworking woman, and she came
to me and said that the director of public welfare, Mr. Monroe Fordham,
had asked her to open a nursing home for blacks. She had at that time
taken in two or three aged people in her home to take care of, under the
auspices of the welfare department, and Monroe Fordham had asked her if
she would open a nursing home for blacks. She told him that she would if
she could get the money, so she came to me to get the money. We went
many places to borrow money, including from the black insurance company
in Durham, and they would not let her have the money. Although she
Is it still there?
Oh, yes, it's still there. About five years after she borrowed the money, the Branch Bank called me and asked me if she would be interested in adding onto her home, that they would be glad to let her have the money. I always wanted to write the insurance company in Durham and say something to them, but I didn't.
That's hard to understand.
It is hard. It was very difficult for me to understand, because they always talk about looking after their own and the fact that white people don't do things they ought to for them.
What is this woman's name?
Geneva Dew.
Is she alive?
Oh, yes, she's alive and doing well. I hear from her at least twice a year. She attended my swearing-in ceremony and the party that was given afterward. I'm very fond of her. She's a very fine person.
I wanted to hear more about that story. After two years with that firm, you became a partner.
Was it two years? I'd forgotten. It wasn't long, I know.
It wasn't long. It was two years. Was that a surprise? That's a very short time.
Yes, I was elated but quite surprised. I didn't turn it down.
Good. The next thing that interests me, in talking about your years with the firm, now as a partner, is what I guess were the first seven years of the sixties, really. In 1967, Governor Moore asked you to serve on the first Court of Appeals, but in those seven years prior to that you were practicing law in Wilson, and am I correct that those were perhaps your most politically active years?
I was never active in politics until Governor Moore offered himself as a
candidate for governor, and I didn't know him personally. But I knew of
him, and I liked what I read about him, and I called Judge [Susie]
Sharp. I knew that she knew him, and she recommended him highly, so I
decided to vote for him. I had not
Was it at that time that you were a vice-president of the Wilson County Democratic Party?
Probably. I'm not sure. I was never really active, but I did what people asked me to do.
What was that experience like, to be so active all of a sudden, in a gubernatorial campaign?
It was a very revealing experience and a very enjoyable one. I knew so
many people in the county that it was not very difficult, and Governor
Moore was such a good candidate to sell that it wasn't very difficult.
He inspired confidence, and he came to Wilson. We travelled over the
county. People got to know him, and so it wasn't as hard as it would
have been if it had been another candidate, I don't suppose. I don't
know, because I'd never done it before, as I say. But I enjoyed every
minute of it, and I practically had to give up my law practice. But the
men in the office
Did you have to give many talks of your own on behalf of Mr. Moore?
I don't recall that I did. The talking that I did was primarily one-on-one, going around the county and visiting people.
Were those exciting times, anyway, the early sixties down there in Wilson? There was so much going on, I guess, politically to be involved in with the campaign.
I guess. Betty McCain was chairman for Richardson Preyer, whom I liked. I liked Richardson Preyer very much, but just liked Dan Moore better as a candidate. I think Betty thought she had Wilson County pretty well sewed up. She didn't.
It sounds, just from what I'm hearing, that it would never have entered your mind then or now that you would want to do something politically yourself in politics.
No. I was asked to run for the legislature, and might have had I not been involved in law practice. But I don't know; I don't exclude that from the future. I might run for the legislature when I get back. And I will have the opportunity to become active in some political campaigns, and I probably will. Maybe not so much getting some people elected as trying to keep some others from being elected.
That'd be interesting. At some point down the road, it would be wonderful to hear about the judiciary versus politics and you in it.
Of course, the judiciary is supposed to be completely
That's my point. As a way to spend yourself and your energies, on the bench as opposed to politically, what you would have to say down the road as far as which challenged you more, which was more satisfying, which frustrated you more, where you thought you might accomplish the most. Do you know what I'm saying?
Oh, I don't think there's any question of that. I think service on the bench is infinitely preferable to politics.
Why?
Why?
Yes.
Well, because service on the bench is a service to the state. Politics is a service to oneself. A person gets into politics these days not because he wants to serve his state, but for his own personal advancement, in most instances. There are very few people who go to the legislature because they want to serve the state, not any more. It used to be that the person who went to the legislature from any county was the outstanding citizen of that county.
Yes.
And a person who could afford to go to the legislature and who could
afford to accept the measly six hundred dollars a session that they got,
and so you had outstanding people in the legislature. But that's not
true now. People go to the legislature because they have a gripe about
one issue or because it's a means of income for them. A legislator now
makes, I guess, about twenty thousand dollars a year, which is a good
bit of money to a lot of people in the legislature. Now that's not to
say they're all that
But those would not be reasons you would do it.
Oh, heavens, no. No, indeed, because I don't think it's the right reason.
I don't think the legislature requires the time that it takes to run the
state business. [Interruption]
About the legislature, as we're talking, it would seem that if you made a decision to give yourself to that, it would be because you knew that what you had done so far had given you something that you still had to share over there.
Well, either that or there are a lot of issues that come before the legislature now which need a person with legal training to interpret. There used to be a lot of lawyers in the legislature who understood the legal problems and who understood the business of the state. There are very few lawyers in the legislature now, and, unfortunately, the majority of the people in the legislature are opposed to lawyers.
Why?
They call them liars. They look down on lawyers. That's just the makeup of the legislature. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is. There are a lot of retired schoolteachers in there and a lot of preachers. A lot of them are there because they have one issue; a schoolteacher wants more money.
There's something else that I want to talk to you about before our last
ten or twelve minutes runs out. For about twenty-five years, every week,
you taught Sunday school, and what intrigues me, because of my own
background and just because it is
Well, I hope it's spilled over. I don't know that it has, but I hope it has. I don't know exactly what you have in mind.
I don't have anything in mind. I just want you to talk about that. Why would you do that for twenty-five years, every week? It must have been terribly important to you.
Why would you not do it? Everything you have comes from the Lord, you know. I was born with certain abilities, but they're God-given. I didn't reach out and pick them up somewhere. The ability to earn money is God-given, and I owe a certain part of that back. It's really simple, very simple. I was reared in a Christian home, and my parents before me were reared in Christian homes. It never occurred to me not to go to Sunday school. My parents went to Sunday school and church. I went to what we called the BYPU on Sunday evenings. That was the Baptist Young People's Union, and unless I went there I couldn't have a date on Sunday night. If I wasn't able to go to BYPU, I wasn't able to have a date. And it never occurred to me to say I didn't want to go to Sunday school. It wouldn't have made any difference whether I wanted to; I would have gone anyhow.
Were your friends the same way, or were you different in that way?
I supposed they were the same way. We all went to Sunday school. I never
asked whether they wanted to or didn't want to;
I met a law student who was one of your Sunday school students.
Oh, really. Well, I won't ask you what he said about it.
It was a she
I think it's a very important part of a person's life, and I feel sorry for people who don't have that. I really do, because I think they're missing something. I think they have missed something. I think they've missed a stability that you can't get anywhere else.
Is it something that you're conscious of, that when you're on the bench
or whether you were preparing your trial, when you were
I don't know that you'd think of it consciously, but I think subconsciously you would have to, because you develop a feeling for right and wrong. You recognize in many instances it's a gray area, but you know what's right, and you know what's wrong. You have certain moral values, and they're bound to overflow into your business life and your professional life. If they don't, you don't have them.
What interests me is that wouldn't you say that at this point, your colleagues on the bench, shall we say, and persons you've served with through the years pretty much share that. I'm thinking down the road perhaps five, ten, fifteen [years], another generation away. I wonder if there will be differences, because persons who sit there with that authority don't have that same orientation that you had.
Oh, there will be differences if they don't have it. Oh, yes, indeed. There'll be differences in attitude, differences in the philosophies. Yes, indeed, there'll be sizeable differences.
It just seems inevitable that we're going to find out about that, because the persons who are coming out of school now and who will sit there will not bring to that experience what you have there.
They ought to bring to it that experience, if they're the right sort of
people. If the right sort of people are appointed and elected to the
bench—but primarily appointed—then that sort of person will be on the
bench. But if care is not taken in selecting people for the bench, then
you will have the problem about which you just spoke. But if the right
sort of person is put there, you won't
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
Judge Morris, this is our third meeting. The first two times that we were together, we talked about your life before being a lawyer, going to law school, your practice with the firm in Wilson, and we ended agreeing that this time we would talk about the years that you spent on the Court of Appeals doing judging. You were named to that court in 1967 by then Governor Moore. You had been practicing with your firm in Wilson for twelve years, two years right out of law school and then the next ten as a partner. Now you have fifteen years behind you as judge on that court. Today what we want to talk about is just simply Naomi Elizabeth Morris, Judge.
I thought that a way to begin to get into that would be for you to reminisce a bit about the time in 1967 when you first learned that Governor Moore wished you to do this. Do you recall exactly how you got wind that this was in his mind?
Yes, I got a telephone call from Rachel Speers, who was Governor Moore's
girl Friday, telling me that the Governor wanted to see me the next
morning at eleven o'clock. I had no idea what he wanted to see me about.
I went down to the office the next morning and rearranged my schedule
and told my senior partner that the Governor wanted to see me at eleven
o'clock. I thought that he wanted to see me about a young man in Wilson
who, I knew, wanted to be
You learned in July, I believe, and then you were going to being that following October.
Yes. Of course, he told me before July that he wanted me to do it. The announcement was made public in July. Then I had to begin closing out my part of the law practice and dishing out cases and things to other members of the firm. We started really settling down to work in late September or early October. I was sworn in in early July.
At that point, did you have plans to bring your mother with
No, indeed. I knew Mother wouldn't want to come to Raleigh. No, I planned to commute.
Also at that time, is it true that at that point in time there were two other women jurists in North Carolina? In one article that I read, it named you as the third, and I was curious. Who were the others?
I don't know. Susie Sharp was the only one that I knew anything about. If there's ever been another one at that time, I don't know who it was.
The thing that comes to my mind naturally to ask you next, after all of this happened and you made the decision to go ahead with it, is if we could talk a little bit about the process, as I call it, of just learning to be a judge. In other words, you left one sort of a life in Wilson as a lawyer, and you came to Raleigh, and of course part of your learning to be a judge was happening simultaneously with a court being formed. Is that correct?
That's correct. Of course, any time a person goes on the appellate bench,
it's a learning process. I don't think anybody ever goes on the
appellate bench and is immediately a good appellate court judge. I
remember Justice Higgins told me that it took him a good long while to
feel that he was competent to do the job, and of course Justice Higgins
was a very competent Supreme Court justice. I would be very much afraid
of any person who went on the Appellate Court bench feeling that they
could immediately do a good job and who, after they'd been on there even
two or three months, felt that they were doing a good job. I'd be very
much afraid of them, because it's a constant learning process. The
fifteen years that I was on the
Were you the only person among the first group of judges who had never judged before?
No. David Britt had never judged before. Judge Mallard had been a Superior Court judge. Judge Campbell had been a Superior Court judge. Judge Brock had, and Judge Farthing had. But neither Judge Britt nor I had ever been a judge.
Describe the process a bit of doing the judging, including the routine. That interests me also, when you first got there how you organized so that the record on appeal would reach you and so forth.
The first thing we had to do was set up some rules for the practicing
attorneys. The making of rules for the court is the prerogative of the
Supreme Court, regardless of what the legislature thinks. The Supreme
Court has the right and duty to make the appellate rules, and so we set
about getting up some rules for the Court of Appeals and submitted them
to the Supreme Court, and they were adopted. Then those rules were sent
out to all the lawyers, and we began getting appeals filed in, I guess,
November or December, but we didn't have any hearings until early in the
next year. All of the lawyers had to have the time to give their notice
of appeal and get their records in to the court. Although we became a
court as such in July, we didn't hear any appeals until the next year,
because it took all that time to get the rules done and to notify the
lawyers, to get the rules out and let them know what the time frame was
within
In the very first times, after you would have heard a case. . . . You would have sat on a panel of three, is that correct?
Mm-hm.
After you would hear the arguments, has it always been true since the beginning that you would immediately confer together as a panel of three?
Yes, just as soon as the oral arguments were concluded, the judges sat
together and considered. At the very beginning there were only two
panels. The Chief Judge of the Court presided over one panel, and the
next in seniority was Judge Campbell, who presided over the other panel.
It was only at the end of the year, when they sat with each other, that
there was another presiding judge for either one of the panels. The
statute requires that the judges sit with each other one time during the
year, which was no problem as long as there were only six judges, but it
is a problem with twelve judges. But from the very beginning, after the
arguments were heard the judges conferred and discussed the cases that
were argued and came to some conclusion as to what the outcome should
be, at least a preliminary conclusion. Then the matter was assigned to
one of the members of the panel to write, and after the person to whom
it was assigned had finished at least a draft opinion, it was circulated
to the other two
Why don't you name those people?
The original court was Judge Raymond Mallard from Tabor City, who was
appointed Chief Judge by then Chief Justice R. Hunt Parker; the next in
seniority was Judge Hugh B. Campbell from Charlotte, who had been a
member of the Superior Court for several years; and then Walter Brock,
who was a Superior Court judge; then Judge James Farthing from Lenoir,
who was also a Superior Court judge. He died, however, in December of
the first year of the court and never sat with us as a rule. He was
replaced by Judge Frank Parker from Asheville, who did sit with us
originally, so for all practical purposes we've always considered him a
member of the original court. Judge David Britt from Fairmont had not
been a Superior Court judge but was Speaker of the
So he was the only legislator among you.
He was the only real politician
Could you say a little more about that? What did you admire about him?
He was thorough; his research was accurate; he wrote clearly and concisely; he was not satisfied with an opinion until he had researched it absolutely completely; he read all of the records and briefs closely; he was always prepared at oral argument(?). That's not to say that all of the original court was not—they were—but Judge Parker seemed to be one of those people who was just meant to be an appellate court judge. He enjoyed it; he worked tirelessly; his opinions were good opinions, correct opinions. I always did use them an example for new people coming on the court. I gave them some of his opinions to read, as being an example of what a good opinion ought to be. He set out his facts correctly and concisely. His opinions were not long, but he spent a lot of time keeping them from being long. It was much more difficult to write a short opinion than it was a long opinion, and do it well. Frank Parker should have been on the Supreme Court. It was a loss to the state that he was not, but he was not a politician.
For how many years did you serve with him?
From 1968, when he came on the court, until he retired three years ago, I guess.
That recently.
Yes. He retired about two years before I did.
In your early recollections of those conferences, is your memory of yourself that you did a lot of listening and learning in those early days?
You see, I was the youngest member of the court and the only woman in it. The Superior Court people had had a lot more experience in litigation, listening to arguments, and yes, I did a lot of listening. Of course, if I felt strongly, I always spoke up. Whenever I felt that it was necessary for me to talk, I did, but I also did a lot of listening. It was a give-and-take situation. We'd discuss cases quite thoroughly.
Is there any particular difficulty or help in serving on a panel of three? Is there something that always has to happen with each case where you have a meeting of minds or a coming together, and does the ease with which that happens depend in each case on who the three are, so that in some cases decisions would come more easily or naturally and in others people were a bit more at odds? Is that something that just takes getting used to, this threesome business?
Of course, people think differently and they view things differently, but
a panel of three good judges generally has no difficulty in reaching a
conclusion. A case may be very close, and before the opinion is written
there may be some disagreement with respect to the law, but if the panel
is composed of three good judges, that person writing it will research
the law, and most of the time the other two will be convinced, after
they check into the cited cases, that that's a correct application of
the law. Occasionally, although it shouldn't be, you'll have a member of
the panel who, for personal reasons, doesn't want the case to come out
that way.
Is it your memory of your time on these various panels that a dissent from you was rare?
I didn't dissent very much.
It seems as if it would have to be rare, by definition. If the three of you were working together on something and you found yourself simply diametrically opposed to the way the other two wanted to go, it sounds like a rare and a big thing.
It would be rare for me to dissent, certainly with the original court,
because we worked so closely together. I did dissent in the workman's
compensation case, the brown lung case, because it seemed to me that all
of the damages suffered could not be attributable to the person's
employment, and that it should be apportioned
Your colleagues disagreed, the other two.
The two did, but then that went across the street to the Supreme Court,
of course, and the Supreme Court agreed with the dissent. There are
instances like that where a dissent is helpful. To dissent because you
don't like the way the opinion is written is not really the way to do
it. In some cases, in addition to the byssinosis case, a judge has
dissented because it's a case which should be reviewed by the Supreme
Court. There may be a situation where the Supreme Court has, over a
period of years, handed down decisions which go in a certain
By definition, where there is a dissent, it must go to the Supreme Court.
It doesn't have to go, but the parties have a right to go to the Supreme Court. They may be satisfied with the result and not take it, but where there's a dissent, then the parties have a right to take it to the Supreme Court. And in one or two instances, maybe more than that, the Supreme Court has reviewed its past decisions and overruled themselves, not because they were wrong but because there's been a sociological change that required a different application of the law. That purpose for idssent is a good one, a very good one. Then there are cases where the members of the panel honestly disagree on how the law should be applied to those facts. There are not too many dissents, and I should say at least seventy-five percent of the time when there is a dissent, it's for a good reason.
Earlier, when you referred to if you have a panel of good judges in reaching a decision, and that connects in my mind with your very first reference to the person who wanted to be a judge and you felt just would not be a good choice. It's emerging in everything that you say, but when you say "a good judge," what I think I'm hearing is that you're talking about a person who is terribly careful and comprehensive in his study.
Right, and willing to devote the time that it requires to do that. Over
the years, there have been on my court one or two people who feel that
they must have their work finished and all opinions written before the
next hearing date. Now that, to me, is absolutely impossible; if you are
a good judge, you cannot do that. There's too much work to be done to
manage to get all of your opinions written before you have the next
hearing date. But there have been a few people on the court who felt
that they had to do that and have done it,
That's interesting. It's a question of expediency, I guess, in their minds, as opposed to . . .
Well, I guess. I've discussed it with one of those who does it, and he said he was so accustomed to getting work out and getting a bill out in the practice of law that he couldn't get over it now, and I suppose that's true.
That's also interesting because the next little bit of time that I had in mind to talk with you is about the basic differences in the routine, the daily life's work routine, between judges and lawyers.
Are we talking about an appellate court judge?
Yes. For you, it was twelve years of the one and fifteen years of the other, almost exactly the same amount of time, and I began to think about some profound differences in just the way you spent your working hours each day, as a lawyer dealing so much more with the clients themselves.
There's all the difference in the world. In the practice of law, you do
deal with the clients daily, and with other members of
It would seem to me you would become a bit homesick for the clients and the courtroom.
You do, and I didn't realize how much I missed it until I started back practicing law. It's an entirely different field. It's a different sort of challenge. Both are challenging, but each is a different type of challenge. In the practice of law, you're challenged differently several times a day. In the appellate court work, if you're lucky and you're not the chief judge, you start working on an opinion in the morning, and you work on that opinion all day. If you're practicing law, you don't have any idea what you may be working on by twelve o'clock when you go to the office at eight-thirty. It's a rapidly moving situation. This morning, I spent the morning choosing a jury in the trial of a case in Superior Court.
Would you say that, in terms of satisfaction, in terms of what one gets, in terms of personal gratification or a feeling of "well done," that the lawyering would give you more tangible and quicker results?
Where did you get this word "lawyering"?
I've read it.
"The practice of law".
Excuse me, I must say that there's a course at our law school entitled "The Lawyering Process".
I know that. I may not approve of it, though.
I won't say it any more.
You don't call it "the doctoring process", do you? It's "the practice of medicine".
"Judging".
Judges don't practice; they're supposed to already be. . . .
That's okay. I'm thinking in terms of, as a judge, dealing with paper and records and only other lawyers and only one another, as opposed to the clients off the street or the people in the courtroom, and what I'm really getting at is if a judge can become more disheartened or disconcerted or the current term "burnout", weary, if that process can occur more naturally for a judge than for a lawyer because there's less of a sense of success or accomplishment. Does that make any sense?
Yes. There have been articles written about judges, as you say, burning themselves out. During the fifteen years that I was on the appellate bench, with the exception of the first few months, I would guess that during the course of a twelve-months period there were very, very few nights and weekends that I didn't work for at least a part of the time. Some weekends I worked all day, both Saturday and Sunday. Many nights I went back to the office and worked until almost midnight. Now of course when I was practicing law, I worked occasionally like that, but not steadily. But on the Court of Appeals I worked steadily like that. I well remember the first weekend I spent reading records and briefs, I saw Judge Sharp somewhere the next week. She asked me about the weekend, and I said, "Well, I spent the weekend reading records and briefs." She said, "I wondered how long it would be before you got to that." She said she knew it had to come. But I did it, because I was one of the judges who felt that you should not go into the courtroom to hear an argument if you hadn't read the records and briefs.
Yourself.
Yes. And I still think that. We did, however, have a pre-hearing staff which gave us a summary of the records and briefs which got you into them and made it a little bit easier to read. But I am a firm believer in the judge reading the records and briefs.
Is it also a function of the large volume of cases? If you were going to do it the way you think it needs to be done, you just had to do it at night.
That's the only time I could do it.
Because of being chief?
I did that even before I became chief, but when I became chief I did it even more.
Do you think there should be more judges on the court?
No. I think that's one of the problems now. There are too many judges. I voted against adding a panel, and I'm glad I did. I think most of the judges thought that if they had to vote again, the ones who voted at that time, at any rate, would not have voted for the addition of a panel.
Say a little more about that. Why would three more be too many more?
We had six to begin with. It was a beautifully working relationship. We could very easily work with each other and know what was going on. Then we had three more. A court of nine is not too difficult to work with if there's congeniality and if everybody on the court is capable and able and wants to work. It's rather easy to keep up with what everybody's doing. With a court of twelve people, you lose congeniality; you lose knowledge of what's going on on the court, of what's being written, of what questions are being presented to the court, and there's a real risk of one panel overruling another panel. In order to prevent that, we began to have every judge file in the library a sheet which would give, when an opinion was filed, what the opinion was about, what case, what questions were involved, and so forth, so that subsequently judges working on the cases could check that to determine whether what they were working on had already been decided. Occasionally we caught ourselves almost getting ready to overrule an opinion.
Amazing.
Well, to have more than twelve would be absolutely impossible. I feel that a better quality of work would be done by a lesser number of judges, and I feel that there are ways of controlling the case load other than by adding people.
Such as?
Such as allowing matters to come up by certiorari rather than direct appeal as a matter of right, such as what we were doing at the time I left, and I assume they're still doing: I don't know. Working through a settlement conference procedure and a summary disposition. That is, taking cases that have little or no precedential value and little merit and disposing of them summarily, and that reduces the case load. Of course, the judge has to write the opinion, but it's usually a very short summary sort of opinion.
Is one judge authorized to do that summary disposition, or must a panel of three agree?
A panel of three has to agree on it. It would be very bad to let one judge take that.
Was it during your time as chief that each of these procedures, the settlement and the summary disposition, began?
Right. But whether that'll continue, I don't know.
In the fifteen years that you were on the court, there were a few years of the sixties, all of the seventies, and the first two-and-a-half or whatever of the eighties. Can you say that over the course of those three decades there were certain changes that became clear to you in certain ways? For example, I'm wondering for starters, the quality of argument that would appear before you.
More pronounced than the quality of the argument was the quality of the written material. The quality of the briefs has declined measurably. The lawyers, particularly the younger ones, do not know how to express themselves. They know little or no grammar and apparently don't care. That manifests itself not only in the written arguments but in the oral arguments. They don't know the meaning of words; they don't know how to put a sentence together properly; their demeanor is not what it ought to be.
What do you mean by that?
They don't have the respect for the court that they should have.
How do you know?
They slouch up to the podium, and they don't address the court with
dignity. It's just as though they are in a gymnasium. They pay no
attention to decorum. I'll take that back. Ninety percent of the
students who are being graduated from Campbell are taught
That is my next question. This is certainly a statement about whatever we're doing at our law school and perhaps at other local law schools. What has happened? Have they stopped teaching this, or did they ever, or how can they, and what's going on at Campbell?
Yes. They started when I was there. This course that you call "Lawyering" ought to have something in it, but I doubt that it does. I think one of the problems is, so many of the professors in the law schools have never practiced law. At Campbell Law School, for the most part it's composed of people who have been in active practice and have retired, so they know whereof they speak. And some of it is the fault of the judges for letting these young people get by with that sort of thing. The older judges don't let them get by with it; some of the newer judges do, which would indicate a lessening of quality on the bench.
So it's sort of perpetuating itself. It's a bit of a vicious circle.
I'm afraid so.
But these are the young attorneys who'll become the judges.
That's right. And say what you will, the young people are not being taught in public schools grammar.
I know.
They don't have the advantage of having Latin, and if they had it and they didn't want to take it, they wouldn't be made to take it. A good part of the blame is on the public schools, and a good part of it on the law schools.
Definitely. At Campbell, what specifically are they doing that you're aware of in terms of this kind of training?
For example, at Campbell they have their moot court arguments, they have
the trial court, and they have the appellate court
A real practicing judge.
Well, a retired judge. I will critique the appellate work that they're going to do this spring.
In other words, they've brought you in to help them with their moot court program.
Right. I will tell them what they're doing wrong and when they don't have the proper respect for the court, and I won't hesitate to tell them.
Of course.
And they know that. But that's one of the things that they're doing, and they're teaching these young people respect for the court system. I'm afraid that my alma mater and yours is not teaching that.
I think you're right.
It's unfortunate, but I'm afraid they're not. They have a lot of courses . . .
With interesting titles.
It's a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, I'm afraid.
But that doesn't mean that they couldn't.
Oh, no, no, no. It doesn't mean that they couldn't at all.
This is just a bit of a digression, but they're at a bit of
I hope that they will go in the right direction. They have put back in a legal bibliography course, which is good. But we didn't come here to talk about this.
No, but it's good to have this down, I believe, for persons who will read this who are interested in legal education. It's very good. Another question about fifteen years on the court and changes. I came across a quotation from Chief Justice Rose Byrd out in California about the role of the judge in the eighties, and I wanted to ask you about that. She said that "Courts in the past few years have been forced to resolve issues that politicians in the executive and legislative branches do not want to face." In other words, she was, I think, implying that there was going to have to be much more of a judicial activism just because no one else would do it.
It doesn't have to be. The courts can refuse to do it, and then the people who are responsible for it will have to do it. The courts don't have to decide political questions unless they want to. If they want to take an activist role in politics, then they can and will, and some do.
Have you had that experience, where a case would be before you when it was fairly clear that the legislature . . .
Yes, and we have said very clearly that this is a question for the legislature and not for the courts.
And so you just simply will not . . .
Well, we haven't. Now what the present court's going to do, I don't know, but we haven't in the past decided legislative questions.
So you simply are saying you don't have to be put into that position.
Oh, no, you don't have to be
You don't have to be forced into it.
Certainly not.
This is a very nice lead-in. I'm going to turn this tape over, because
there's another whole section I want to get into. [Interruption]
So am I. I haven't gotten that far along.
Maybe we could think out loud about it for a few minutes. Off the top of your head then, if you are going to help young emerging lawyers to understand the role of the judge in 1983, are there certain issues that they just have to deal with, perhaps one being this judicial activism?
Possibly. That would be certainly one of the things that we will talk
about in the class. My guess is that it's going to sort of go and flow
in the way that the students develop it by their response. We will
follow a case book, but it's my plan to use as many Supreme Court and
Court of Appeals decisions from North Carolina as in the case book. Now
whether I'll be able to develop that, I don't know. It's pretty close to
here, and I have not a great deal of time to do that. But that's what I
plan to do if I can work it out. I think it's going to be a rather
interesting course.
Their philosophy of the judicial process?
Mm-hm.
What's yours?
Well, I don't know. I think you can tell from our interviews thus far
that it's my honest and sincere feeling that only the most qualified
persons should either seek or get judicial positions. We have had, I'm
afraid, some people who were not well qualified who have sought the
positions. Some of them have been elected; many of them have been
appointed. I think it's absolutely essential that the appointive power
seek the most qualified persons for the appointment, regardless of their
political activity. Some of our governors have forgotten, if ever they
knew, that judges are not supposed to be politically active and cannot
be politically active if they are doing what they are supposed to do.
The code of judicial conduct absolutely prohibits a judge from being
active in politics, and the governors should know that, particularly
those governors who have been lawyers, and most of them have recognized
that. We've been extremely fortunate in this state with governors who
have been very concerned about the judiciary in government. I think one
of the highlights of Dan Moore's stay in the governor's office was his
quality appointments to the judiciary, and I'm excluding myself. But his
appointments to the judiciary, by and
Who were others?
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
" . . . about the quality of the judges he appointed. In one or two instances, he didn't feel that there was a Republican qualified for the position, and he'd appoint a Democrat. That's the kind of concern for judicial appointments that a governor should have. Politics should not be the primary consideration. Of course, in a situation where there are two qualified people seeking the job or available for the job and one of them has been politically active, then that certainly would enter into the governor's thinking, but what I'm saying is that a judge should not have been politically active, just isn't supposed to be. When a person gets on the bench, his political activities should cease the minute he puts on the robe.
What sort of political activities are you referring to?
Support of candidates. Of course, a judge can support judicial candidates.
Do you have any comment to make on Governor Hunt's concern and appointment for qualified persons?
I suppose whatever I say would be used against me. He has made some good appointments. He has also made some appointments which are not good, in my opinion, not as qualified as the people ought to be. I suppose, numerically, they would outweigh those who are really qualified appointments.
You keep using the word "qualified." Tell me more about
If you're going to put a person on the bench, if they've never been a judge, they should be a very good lawyer, a very well recognized lawyer, one with years of experience and who is dignified, whose character is absolutely above reproach, who is well respected by the legal profession, and who is rated high by those who rate lawyers, and one who has practiced long enough to get a rating.
What is your opinion about the decision of an individual to run for a judgeship?
It depends on the individual. It's not all bad. We've had some good people who ran for judgeships. For example, Judge Harry Martin on my court ran for it, and he's very good. It was my intention to run for the Supreme Court, until Governor Hunt and Judge Copeland decided that I wouldn't have that opportunity. There's nothing wrong with running for a court if you're a qualified person. Sometimes that's the only way you can get there, because if you're not politically attuned to the appointive person, you won't have an opportunity to become a judge. There are lots of people out there who are well qualified. Unfortunately, so many of the really good lawyers are not interested in it because of the expense of running and because of the relative positions of income from a good practicing lawyer and a judge. A good practicing lawyer's income is always higher than he would get if he were a judge. It's a matter of public service, and you don't find too many people who are willing to take money out of their pockets and run to do a public service. You'll find lots of lawyers who aren't doing too well financially who would be willing to run.
Do you mind saying a bit what you mean? I don't understand what you mean when you say you had intended and would have liked to run for the Supreme Court.
That was all in the News and Observer. You take the News and Observer?
No.
I had said that I would run for the Supreme Court if Justice Copeland retired.
When was this?
This was last year, when they were getting ready to. . . . If I had
stayed on the bench, I would have had to run in 1982, you see. I had
said publicly that if Justice Copeland decided not to run and was going
to retire, I would run for his seat. He had indicated that he would not
run, that he was going to retire. He had told some of the members of his
family that he wasn't going to. Then, on the Monday before the filing
deadline, he and Governor Hunt had lunch, and Justice Copeland said that
he had changed his mind, and he would not retire. The News
and Observer had an article which indicated that Governor Hunt
had done that to prevent my getting on the Supreme Court. Whether he did
I have no idea, but of course it did prevent my running, because I had
said that I would not run against Justice Copeland if he decided not to
retire. So that's what I was talking about. I assumed that you had read
it in the News and Observer. It was in the paper for
about a week daily, so I thought surely you'd read it.
I was buried in my carrel.
Was that very painful?
No. You take things as they come. You get disappointed in people, which I did, but. . . .
A couple of more words on this idea of judicial activism. I knew since last summer, when I did a little reading on this myself about Justice O'Connor, that I would love to have the chance to ask you the question that I was trying to explore about her. Justice O'Connor said before she took her seat on the Supreme Court, "I know well the difference between a legislator and a judge, and the role of the judge is to interpret the law, not make it."
That's right.
The problematic thing is that a number of judges, Cardozo and others that we encountered in our judicial process case book, the Oldisert book. . . . I don't know if you will use that same one. But in any event, it seems problematic because, for example, one of the persons in that book says, "Few appellate judges talk that way," namely the way that I just quoted, "today. It used to be fashionable for judges to say they never made the law, but only found pre-existent law and applied it to new facts." The point, I guess, that they were making is that the truth is that in certain circumstances a judge must, in some kind of ways, break new ground. The law just simply isn't there to be applied.
Oh, yes. You get cases of first impression, and in those cases you have to say what the law is for this jurisdiction . . .
For the first time.
. . . as applied to those facts. To that extent the courts make law, but that should be the only instance in which the court makes law. And they aren't really making it at that point; they are simply taking old precedents and analogizing to the present fact situation and determining what should be the law applicable to these facts. They don't just reach out and make some law. They do it by taking the existing law and applying it the best way they can and then taking by analogy other fact situations and laws and applying them. That is, of course, court-made law, but it isn't the type of law that the legislature makes, nor should the courts take over the province and jurisdiction of the legislature.
In your own experience in your fifteen years on the court, did you many times or at any time encounter those sorts of junctures where you had to clarify what the legislature had said?
Yes. You'll find many opinions in our books and the Supreme Court books where we said the legislature meant so-and-so, and that's simply saying what we think the legislature meant, and to that extent I guess you could say that courts make law, but that's interpreting the law in a straighter sense.
I suppose the difficult thing or the challenge would be for you to ascertain as carefully as you could what you think they meant, even if it was what you really didn't believe was the best thing.
That's right. The intention of the legislature is sometimes difficult to perceive, but you have to do your best to find out, and you go back to committee reports and committee hearings and see if you can come . . .
And have you personally experienced that sort of conflict
Oh, yes. But you wrote the opinion applying what the legislative intent, as you found it to be, was, or I did.
And you abstained from any sort of personal comment or . . .
Well, there have been one or two instances that I felt that a comment was necessary, but I followed that with "If there is to be a change made, it's up to the legislature to make it."
Yes. You mentioned Judge Parker. In looking back over your years on the court, are there any other persons on your court, on the Supreme Court, or just in general that you could say now in retrospect were definitely role models?
Judge Mallard was an excellent judge. Judge Brock was. He went to the Supreme Court. Judge Whichard on the current court is an excellent judge. So is Judge Becton. I think Judge Sharp was a very, very fine Supreme Court justice. So was Judge Bobbitt. I think sometimes the opinions were too long, but that was their problem. But both the courts have some very fine, capable, able jurists on them.
A natural final question, I think, is, unless you or we could think of some more aspects of this that we want to be sure to include as we think about your life as a judge, now that you are not a judge, how you would best want to be remembered as a judge?
As a good judge, fair, impartial, competent, with clarity of expression and knowledge of the law.
If you could articulate the contribution that such a judge, a good judge,
makes, I suppose it's more a contribution, isn't it, to
Probably a contribution to the state in the written opinions that go out all over the country, and in other instances outside of the United States. These opinions that the judges write are published, as you know.
You do not believe, do you, that they should stop publishing the Court of Appeals opinions?
No. I don't even know that there's a movement afoot to do that. Quite frankly, some lawyers feel that the Court of Appeals opinions are not of the quality they ought to be. I'm afraid I have to agree with them. Perhaps they think that because of that, they shouldn't be published, but I don't think that's true. I think there's some quality work coming from the court. I'd like to think that even the court doesn't think the work is of the quality it ought to be. There's a time limitation on the judges which restricts their ability to do the kind of work that they'd like to do, at least I hope they'd like to do and think they'd like to do. All people aren't willing to spend nights and weekends working. Maybe they shouldn't be required to.
Judge Morris, in that same book The Judicial Process,
Judge Jerome Frank once wrote that "In the last push, a judge's
decisions are the outcome of his entire life's history."
. . . If in saying that he means that the result of the entire life's
history is a result of his educational qualifications, his ability to
take a problem and work through it, his abilities that he has developed
over the years with respect to his articulation, his expression, then
I'd agree with him. If he's saying that the
What about a judge's upbringing in terms of morals, religion?
Now that probably has something to do with the way that he feels the law should be applied to a situation. And there are those of us who are conservative and those of us who are liberal. I happen to be very conservative. I've tried not to let that show in my opinions. I guess it does, because I do feel that way. And maybe it isn't all bad. I just don't know. It's something to think about. For example, I went before the Nominating Committee for the Federal Court of Appeals, and about the only question that was asked me was, "What have you done for the civil rights movement lately?" And my answer was, "Nothing. It's not my province to do anything for the civil rights movement." But better than half of the members of that commission felt that that was what I was supposed to be doing.
As a judge on the Court of Appeals.
As a judge on the Court of Appeals. That, in my opinion, is absolutely wrong.
And this was a nominating committee to consider you for membership on the other court?
Up for appointment on the federal court. As Justice O'Connor said in her
hearing before the Senate, "How I feel about something has nothing to do
with the way I apply the law. I apply the law as it's written to the
facts as they are before me. And
I thought that's what you would say.
I don't see how it can be any other way.
How would another person—I don't know who—have answered the question, "What have you done for the civil rights movement lately?" Would the person have referred to specific opinions?
Yes, I expect that's what they wanted. I don't know how anybody would have answered it. I know how I answered it and felt very strongly about it.
These are the sorts of things, I would imagine, that will enliven a course on the judicial process, these very sorts of things.
Possibly.
These very sorts of things
To go into politics.
And I know that they will be. . . . Or on behalf of certain . . .
Which is not the reason for a legal education. If you want to go in politics, take political science.
Although I suppose a study of the law would be a very good tool to take to the legislature.
Oh, yes, except we have very few lawyers in the legislature now.
Do you think there should be more?
Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. It's very difficult for me to understand how people without any legal background can make laws. But the legislature generally doesn't like lawyers.
Perhaps this could be another chapter in your life, and we could end on that note.
END OF INTERVIEW