CAMPBELL, WILLIAM JOSEPH

CAMPBELL, WILLIAM JOSEPH

When he was named to the federal bench at age
thirty-five in 1940,William J. Campbell was the
youngest judge ever appointed; at the time of his
death, he was the longest-tenured federal judge
in the United States, with almost fifty years of
service to his credit.
William Joseph Campbell was born in
Chicago on March 19, 1905. The son of a Scottish
wool merchant, he grew up in a middleclass
neighborhood on the city’s west side.
There, he attended St. Rita High School and St.
Rita College. After graduation, he worked as an
insurance claims adjuster while enrolled in a
night program at Chicago’s Loyola University
law school. Campbell earned his doctor of
JURISPRUDENCE degree in 1926 and was admitted
to the Illinois bar in 1927. He returned to
Loyola in 1928 to complete a master of laws
degree.
Shortly after passing the bar in 1927, Campbell
partnered with a longtime friend to open
the law firm of Campbell and Burns. The new
firm’s first major client, the Roman Catholic
Archdiocese of Chicago, would have a profound
influence on Campbell’s professional life, introducing
him to the world of Chicago Democratic
politics.
With the help of church leaders and prominent
Chicago Catholics, Campbell formed the Young Democrats for Roosevelt in 1932, when
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT was governor of New
York and a presidential hopeful. The powerful
Chicago Democratic political machine shunned
Roosevelt and used its power to thwart Roosevelt’s
efforts to secure permits for his campaign
events. Undaunted, Campbell put a
bishop in front of a Catholic Youth Organization
band and had them march through the streets of
Chicago in an “illegal parade” that brought considerable
attention to the candidate. Years later,
Campbell said, “Naturally, when all those Irish
policemen saw the bishop, they weren’t about to
do anything but say hello and salute.”
After Roosevelt’s election, Campbell continued
to be an outsider in Chicago Democratic
politics, but he had clearly earned Roosevelt’s
attention and admiration. In 1935 Campbell was
named Illinois administrator for the president’s
National Youth Administration.
In 1938 Campbell was named U.S. attorney
for the Northern District of Illinois. Appointed
by Roosevelt to fight the Chicago Democratic
political machine, Campbell made the most of
the job. As a young federal prosecutor, he
crossed paths with many of the city’s more colorful
citizens, including notorious gangster AL
CAPONE, and he continually challenged the city’s
political leaders and their system of influence.
Two years later, in an effort to appease those
leaders during an election year, Roosevelt
removed Campbell as prosecutor—and
appointed him to a federal judgeship. “I got
kicked upstairs,” Campbell said. “[Roosevelt]
needed the machine for the election.” Campbell
was appointed U.S. district judge for the Northern
District of Illinois on October 10, 1940, and
he began his long judicial career on October 22.
As a prosecutor, Campbell had been part of
the team that convicted Capone of TAX EVASION;
in his early years as a judge, he supervised
Capone’s PAROLE. “I insisted that . . . he never set
foot in Cook County [Illinois], and he agreed
to it,” said Campbell. “I also insisted that he pay
every last nickel in taxes he owed the government.”
Capone protested by paying his millions
of dollars in back taxes in pennies. Though a
Chicago bank actually counted and verified the
amount in a day, Campbell initially threatened
to do the job himself, one penny at a time—
and to make Capone sit in jail until he had
finished.
Only two years into his federal judgeship,
Campbell conducted one of the few TREASON
trials ever held in the United States (United
States v. Haupt, 47 F. Supp. 832 [N.D. Ill. 1942],
opinion supplemented by 47 F. Supp. 836 [N.D.
Ill. 1942]). He sentenced three men to death
after they had been convicted in a Nazi plot to
poison Chicago’s water supply. “We had to blaze
a trail” in that case, he said, because there were
no statutes governing such matters. Campbell
said the only guidelines available were in the
U.S. Constitution. Though an appellate court
later overturned the death sentences (United
States v. Haupt, 136 F.2d 661 [7th Cir. 1943]),
Campbell often called the case a highlight of his
career.
Campbell was named chief judge of the U.S.
District Court in Chicago on April 6, 1959. In
his years on the federal bench, he earned a reputation
as an innovative, courageous, and practical
jurist. Fellow U.S. district judge James C.
Paine said Campbell was “the kind of judge each
of us would like to be.”
When asked to hear politically charged Illinois
reapportionment cases in the late 1950s,
Campbell called a historic joint session between
the federal court and the Illinois Supreme Court
to resolve the issues. Even though the state legislature
had been unwilling or unable to act,
Campbell’s unique team was able to reapportion
Illinois’s state and federal legislative districts to
the satisfaction of most parties.
In the early 1960s, Campbell summoned a
group of private attorneys to a luncheon. There,
he pointed out the financial benefit they were
realizing from U.S. BANKRUPTCY court case
assignments. He asked the group to return the
favor by contributing money so that the city
might provide lawyers for indigent defendants.
They did. “A word from the chief judge went a
long way,” said HUBERT WILL, another federal
district judge in Chicago. Campbell also had a
knack for appropriating money for the federal
judiciary. Owing in large part to his efforts, the
budget for the judiciary between 1960 and 1970
increased from $51 million to $117 million.
Chicago’s federal defender program, resulting
from Campbell’s luncheon and gentle armtwisting,
was launched in 1965. It became a
model for the nation long before programs
offering free representation for indigent clients
accused of committing federal crimes were
mandated and funded by Congress. Also in
1965, Campbell set up an internship program
for law school students. A novel idea in 1965, it
is now commonplace.
Campbell was equally committed to the continuing
professional education of judges and
supporting personnel. He was a force in the
establishment of the FEDERAL JUDICIAL CENTER,
which is the federal courts’ agency for
research and continuing education. It was established
by statute in 1967 as a separate organization
within the federal judicial system (28
U.S.C.A. 620-629). Through the Federal Judicial
Center, Campbell participated in hundreds of
seminars and workshops in all parts of the
United States in order to give new district
judges, magistrates, bankruptcy judges, clerks of
court, PROBATION officers, and other judicial
personnel the benefit of his wisdom and
experience.
Campbell served as First District judge representative
of the Seventh Circuit on the JUDICIAL
CONFERENCE OF THE UNITED STATES
(1958–1962); member of the Committee on
Pretrial and Protracted Case Procedures
(1941–1960); and chairman of the Judicial Conference
Committee on the Budget (1960–1970).
He was the author of numerous publications,
including the first manual on protracted case
procedures. Among the many honors accorded
him were degrees from Loyola University (doctor
of laws, 1955), Lincoln College (doctor of
laws, 1960), Duquesne College (doctor of letters,
1965), and Barat College (doctor of CANON LAW,
1966).
Twice during Campbell’s first thirty years as
a federal judge, he turned down an offer to sit on
an appellate court as well as an offer to return to
a lucrative private law practice. The appellate
court was, for him, too far removed from the
daily hustle of trial court.
When Supreme Court justice FELIX FRANKFURTER
died in 1965, many thought Campbell
was certain to be appointed to the Court by
President LYNDON B. JOHNSON. But Johnson
chose ABE FORTAS, who resigned under pressure
four years later. When asked about the missed
opportunity many years later, Campbell said,
“Although I knew Johnson intimately and personally,
he was bigoted enough not to want two
Catholics on the Supreme Court.” Justice
WILLIAM J. BRENNAN JR. was the one Catholic
already on the Court.
Campbell spent little time lamenting the lost
Supreme Court nomination. Late in 1965, he
decided to take on Chicago syndicate kingpin
Sam Giancana. When Giancana was asked to
testify before a Chicago GRAND JURY, he invoked
his FIFTH AMENDMENT right to remain silent.
Campbell did something never done before: he
gave Giancana IMMUNITY from prosecution and
ordered him to testify. After Giancana refused,
he spent the next year in jail on CONTEMPT
charges.
In spite of his toughness on ORGANIZED
CRIME and career criminals, Campbell showed
compassion for men who refused to fight in the
nation’s wars. When handing out sentences for
draft cases during WORLD WAR II and the VIETNAM
WAR, he often ordered the defendants to
perform community service. He did not see
draft evaders as criminals and refused to treat
them as such.
Campbell became a senior judge on March
19, 1970, his sixty-fifth birthday. Though he was
eligible to retire with full pay for the rest of his
life, he could not accept the thought of leaving
the workforce. As a senior judge, he heard cases
first in Chicago, and then in the Southern District
of Florida, following a move to West Palm
Beach in the mid-1970s. In his last years, he
devoted his time to writing opinions for the Chicago-based U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of
Appeals.He traveled to Chicago from West Palm
Beach twice a year to sit on cases there.
Campbell, who was seen pushing a wheelchair
full of legal briefs and court opinions into
his chambers well into his eighty-second year,
died on October 19, 1988, in West Palm Beach,
at the age of eighty-three.