Legal History Connects Rutgers Law Dean Emeritus to First Jewish Judge in the U.S. to Sit on Federal Bench
Legal history and family history crossed paths recently for Rutgers Law Dean Emeritus Rayman Solomon, with the naming of a federal building in Solomon’s hometown Helena, Arkansas after the first Jewish judge in the U.S. to sit on the federal bench, Jacob Trieber.
Last month, Solomon joined distinguished guests including 8th Circuit judges, the majority of the federal district court bench of Arkansas, including its Chief Judge Brian Miller, and other state and federal judges and elected officials, to represent the local committee that petitioned for the Jacob Trieber Federal Building.
“Being a first is remarkable,” Solomon said during the May 21 ceremony, “but it is not the sole reason to honor someone. Rather, as with Justice Thurgood Marshall, it is one’s deeds and societal contributions that make one worthy of receiving such a great honor as the naming of a federal building.”
Originally from an anti-Semitic Prussia, Trieber began his judgeship at the height of segregation under Jim Crow laws, serving as the district judge for the Eastern District of Arkansas from 1901 to 1927.
According to Solomon, Trieber gave a broad reading to the constitution and laws of the United States to provide federal protection for the civil rights of African Americans.
Judge Trieber’s decisions showcase his forward-thinking interpretation of the 13th Amendment in ruling that white KKK predecessors could be prosecuted for pressuring white businessmen to fire black workers. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed his ruling. However in 1968 the Warren Court not only cited his case, but adopted his reasoning and reversed its own 1905 precedent.
Other exemplary acts of justice include a trial following the Elaine Massacre of 1919 in which over 200 African Americans and five whites were killed. Trieber granted a writ of habeas corpus and stayed the execution of six African American men, who were ultimately spared capital punishment.
“He was remarkable for his ability to render justice to all people at a time when that was not popular.”
Solomon, a legal historian, first encountered the name Jacob Trieber four decades ago when he was researching the bicentennial of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
“One of its judges in 1915 was the first Jew appointed to a federal court of appeals and I was trying to determine if he was the first Jewish federal court judge,” he recalls. “I discovered that Jacob Trieber had been appointed to the U.S. District Court in 1900, and to my amazement he listed Helena as his hometown at the time of his appointment.”
Solomon immediately called his father, David Solomon, who has been a lawyer in Helena since 1939 and is now nearly 100 years old. The Rutgers Law Dean Emeritus learned that Trieber was a cousin of his grandfather’s and had been a distinguished lawyer and Republican political figure in Helena before becoming a judge.
Solomon’s research on Trieber continued at the National Archives, where he learned that the judge’s appointment was unanimously supported by the bar, by Democratic and Republican politicians, and by both the African American as well as white civic communities of Arkansas.
Solomon jokes that Trieber was confirmed by the Senate 36 days after his nomination. “Yes, times were different 100 years ago.”
While Treiber’s decisions reflected a pioneering interpretation of the 13th Amendment, Solomon cautions that he shouldn’t be understood as a “present-day liberal jurist.”
“He was very much a man of his time,” adds Solomon. “But that is exactly why his jurisprudence on race is so remarkable. He understood that economic progress and justice required more than a rigid state’s rights philosophy and an idea that formal equality and freedom were sufficient to achieve actual equality and freedom.”