Path to the Supreme Court
Tom Campbell Clark of Dallas rose through the Justice Department — antitrust, the war-frauds unit, and, less creditably, service as civilian coordinator on General DeWitt's staff implementing the removal of Japanese Americans, a role he publicly called a mistake late in life. Truman's Attorney General from 1945, architect of the federal loyalty program and its list of subversive organizations, he took Murphy's (§80) seat in 1949, confirmed 73–8. Truman, in Merle Miller's contested oral history, later called the appointment his 'biggest mistake.' The record argues otherwise.
On the Supreme Court
Whatever Truman expected, Clark grew into the Court's mid-century workhorse and wrote several of its most consequential majorities. Mapp v. Ohio carried the exclusionary rule to the states; Abington v. Schempp ended school-sponsored Bible reading and framed the secular-purpose test — delivered by a Presbyterian church elder, which blunted the backlash; Heart of Atlanta Motel and Katzenbach v. McClung, announced the same December day, unanimously sustained the Civil Rights Act's public-accommodations title; Sheppard v. Maxwell reversed the 'carnival atmosphere' conviction of Sam Sheppard. When Lyndon Johnson made Ramsey Clark Attorney General in 1967, the father resigned to erase any conflict — by most accounts precisely as Johnson intended, since the vacancy became Thurgood Marshall's (§96). Clark then organized the Federal Judicial Center as its first director and rode circuit almost to his death in 1977.
The Voting Record
How Clark voted in the 2,190 cases the Supreme Court Database records from the 1949 term through the 1966 term, using that database’s classification of each vote as liberal or conservative. The gold tick on each bar is the rate for the other justices sitting on those same cases.
Across the whole career Clark voted with Minton more than with anyone else — the same side of the judgment in 76.2% of their 395 divided cases — and with Douglas least, at 43.3%. See the matrices →Compared against the 12 colleagues Clark shared at least 300 divided cases with.
And Clark ended 3.1 points more conservative relative to those colleagues than at the start — the 23rd-largest shift of the 27 justices with a long enough record to measure. See who changed →
Source · The Supreme Court Database (Spaeth, Epstein, Nelson, Martin, et al.) · how these figures are made
Key Decisions
Mapp v. Ohio
1961Holding · Evidence obtained by unconstitutional search and seizure is inadmissible in state court; Wolf v. Colorado overruled.
Role · Clark wrote the majority (6–3 in judgment, five justices on the Fourth Amendment holding).
The criminal-procedure revolution's opening gun — the exclusionary rule nationalized.
Read the opinion →Abington School District v. Schempp
1963Holding · School-sponsored Bible reading and prayer violate the Establishment Clause.
Role · Clark wrote the 8–1 majority; Stewart (§92) dissented.
The secular purpose and primary-effect test — the core of establishment doctrine for the next half-century.
Read the opinion →Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States
1964Holding · The Civil Rights Act's public-accommodations title was valid under the commerce power.
Role · Clark wrote for a unanimous Court, as in the companion Katzenbach v. McClung.
The constitutional green light for the Second Reconstruction, delivered by a Texan two months after the Act passed.
Read the opinion →Sheppard v. Maxwell
1966Holding · Massive, unrestrained pretrial and trial publicity denied Sam Sheppard due process.
Role · Clark wrote the 8–1 majority.
The charter of fair-trial/free-press balance — trial judges must control the 'carnival atmosphere.'
Read the opinion →Go Deeper
Tom Campbell Clark is the Texas politician who grew on the Court. Harry Truman's attorney general — a machine Democrat who had helped administer the wartime internment of Japanese Americans, a role he came to call the greatest regret of his life — he was named to the Court in 1949 amid charges of cronyism, and confounded the doubters across eighteen years. He wrote Mapp v. Ohio, applying the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule to the states, and Abington School District v. Schempp, ending official Bible reading in the public schools — two pillars of the Warren Court's revolution in criminal procedure and church-state law. He retired in 1967 so that his son Ramsey could become attorney general without a conflict of interest. Alexander Wohl's dual biography of father and son is the fullest modern study; his daughter Mimi Clark Gronlund wrote a warm life. Start with Wohl, read Mapp and Schempp, and reconsider a justice easy to underrate.
The Bookshelf
The fullest modern study, and an ingenious one — a dual biography of Tom Clark and his son Ramsey, the attorney general whose appointment prompted his father's retirement. Wohl uses the pairing to trace two generations of American law, from the machine politics and the internment that shadowed Tom's early career through his surprising evolution into a stalwart of the Warren Court's criminal-procedure and civil-rights revolution, and on to Ramsey's turn toward radical dissent. Balanced and revealing, it recovers a justice too often dismissed as a Truman crony. University Press of Kansas.
Clark's most important opinion, and a cornerstone of the Warren Court's criminal-procedure revolution. Overruling Wolf v. Colorado, he held that evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment must be excluded from state as well as federal trials — completing the incorporation of the exclusionary rule and giving the guarantee against unreasonable searches real teeth in the state courts where most criminal cases are tried. Attacked ever since as letting the guilty go free on a technicality, and defended as the only way to make the Fourth Amendment mean anything, Mapp remains central. Free online.
Clark's landmark on the separation of church and state, and one of the most controversial decisions of its era. Following Engel v. Vitale by a year, he held for an 8–1 Court that state-sponsored Bible reading and recitation of the Lord's Prayer in public schools violate the Establishment Clause, articulating the test — a secular purpose and a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion — that would govern for decades. The decision drew furious backlash and remains at the center of the fight over religion in public life. Free online.
An affectionate, well-researched biography by Clark's daughter, drawing on family papers and personal memory. Gronlund is naturally sympathetic, but she is candid about the internment role and thoughtful about her father's transformation on the Court, and she brings a warmth and interior detail no outside biographer could. Read alongside Wohl for the private man behind the public evolution — the courtly Texan, the devoted family, the pride and pain of the retirement that cleared the way for his son. University of Texas Press.
The standard modern biographical encyclopedia of the Court: a signed essay on each of the 110 justices from Jay to Alito, alphabetically arranged, by a named scholar or journalist. Length tracks reputation — two pages for Thomas Johnson, three for Woods, eleven for Holmes — which is itself a rough map of who the literature has bothered with. It is not a substitute for a biography, and for the justices who have never had one it is often the most careful short account in print. Borrow it free at the Internet Archive.
The one-volume reference on the Court: more than a thousand signed entries on cases, doctrines, institutions and the justices, current to 2005. Cases and people share one alphabet, so a citation can be followed without changing volumes, and the biographical entries are short, written by specialists, and better than a longer sketch at carrying the historiography — what the argument about a justice currently is. Borrow it free at the Internet Archive.
The Reading Path
A researched route through the literature — in order.
- 1.Wohl, Father, Son, and Constitution — for the two Clarks and two generations of American law
- 2.Mapp v. Ohio — for the exclusionary rule against the states
- 3.Abington v. Schempp — for the school-prayer landmark and the Establishment Clause test
- 4.Gronlund, A Life of Service — for the private man, from the daughter who knew him
Where the Papers Are Kept
The Tom C. Clark papers are held at the Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas at Austin — a large collection covering the Justice Department and Supreme Court years, and the base for both the Wohl and Gronlund biographies. A rich record of a career at the center of mid-century law and politics. Visit →
Online Resources
Ideas for Further Research
- The internment and the regret. As a Justice Department official Clark helped coordinate the removal of Japanese Americans to the camps, and late in life he called it the thing he most regretted. Trace the arc from that complicity to his Warren-Court civil-liberties record, and ask whether — and how — a public servant reckons with having administered a grave injustice, and whether the later record is atonement or something more complicated.
- The father-son retirement. Clark left the Court in 1967 so his son Ramsey could serve as attorney general without the appearance of conflict — a striking act of self-effacement, and a window on judicial ethics before formal recusal rules hardened. Use the episode to examine conflict-of-interest norms on the Court, and set the dutiful father against the radical son the office helped make.
- The crony who surprised everyone. Named amid charges of Truman favoritism, Clark became an author of the Warren Court's boldest criminal-procedure and church-state opinions. Ask what the gap between his reputation at appointment and his record on the bench reveals about how little presidents — and pundits — can predict, and set him beside the other 'surprises' (Warren §88, Brennan §90) Eisenhower and Truman produced. Seat lineage: Murphy §80 → Clark → Thurgood Marshall §96.