Judge Ronnie L. White was administered the oath of office to join the bench on the United States District Court’s Eastern District of Missouri in a lively, emotional investiture ceremony held Friday afternoon in the Thomas F. Eagleton U.S. Courthouse in downtown St. Louis.
The ceremony was held in the En BanC Courtroom on the 28th floor featuring keen personal comments from U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill, Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary Russell, Saint Louis University School of Law Dean Michael Wolff and Judge White’s longtime golfing partner and confidante, Missouri Supreme Court Justice George W. Draper III.
Though Judge Draper mostly lightened the mood with golfing stories, he also provided sobering historical perspective. Only in 1961 was the first black federal judge with lifetime tenure appointed. The first black federal judge dates back only to 1937. Judge Draper even traced African-American judicial ambitions back to the Civil War era.
“It was dangerous to get together, back in those days,” Judge Draper said.
Wolff reminded a large, festive audience – which spilled over into courtrooms on two other floors, where guests watched the ceremony remotely – the kind of business Judge White is in. “In this great trial court,” Wolff said, “Judge White will be face-to-face with people facing great adversity.”
Wolff, who served alongside Judge White on the Missouri Supreme Court, gave his former colleague a judge’s highest compliment for another judge, saying on the federal bench Judge White will, as always, be “looking for the justice in each case and deciding promptly.”
U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill, who worked hardest on the appointment, gave the briefest remarks. She seemed to stop short due to a surge of emotion as she recalled the “unbelievably unfair” treatment Judge White received from Senate Republicans when John Ashcroft killed his first federal appointment.
President Clinton first nominated White for the federal Eastern District Court of Missouri in 1997, when Judge White was the first African-American justice on the Missouri Supreme Court. Ashcroft, then a Republican senator from Missouri, blocked White’s nomination, allegedly because of White’s decisions in some death penalty cases. Speaking on the Senate floor, Ashcroft said that a federal judgeship would give White a platform to “push the law in a pro-criminal direction.”
Ashcroft, who was not invited to the investiture ceremony, hovered over it like a ghost. Wolff joked at Ashcroft’s expense and expressed the rage he felt when his friend was unfairly targeted for attack. He shared the amazing memory of later overhearing Ashcroft’s belated apology to Judge White on the steps of the state Capitol when Gov. Matt Blunt was inaugurated.
Judge White’s son, Ronnie L. White II, a newly licensed attorney, gave a heartbreaking child’s perspective of the spiked appointment. Confirmation of an Eastern District federal appointment would have meant his father was coming home to St. Louis from Jefferson City, where the state Supreme Court has chambers.
“It would have meant my dad was coming home,” White said.
Judge White’s wife, Sylvia D. White, who helped their son robe the new federal judge, was often referenced in remarks at the ceremony, but did not speak herself. Their son, however, vividly described a very tight family.
“Raising me was the highest priority in his life,” White said of his father. “He was always there.”
In Judge White’s own brief remarks, he thanked President Obama for risking the appointment of someone whose previous appointment to the same seat had been killed before. The U.S. Senate now has a Democratic majority, and Missouri’s current Republican Senator Roy Blunt did not work against Obama and McCaskill’s appointment of Judge White.
Judge White – defamed by Ashcroft as being “pro-criminal” – was supported in his current appointment by the Missouri Fraternal Order of Police. “As front line law enforcement officers, we recognize the important need to have jurists such as Ronnie White, who have shown themselves to be tough on crime, yet fair and impartial,” Kevin Ahlbrand, president of the state police union, wrote to the U.S Senate Committee on the Judiciary, which first considered the appointment.
Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary Russell gave remarks that were both intensely personal and deeply informed by the needs and demands of the judicial profession. She spoke of how Judge White twice mentored her, at critical points in her own career, as she sought to become and then advance as a judge.
Judge Russell spoke of the “importance of diversity” in the judiciary, by recalling how audiences of black youth light up whenever Judge White speaks at public events, seeing a possible future for themselves.
She also gave her former mentor succinct and telling praise as a jurist and a person.
“All his opinions are respected widely,” Judge Russell said, “and Judge White as a person is respected widely.”
