John T. Noonan Jr.

John T. Noonan Jr. was a United States circuit judge who served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1985 until his death in 2017. Born in Boston on October 24, 1926, he brought to the federal bench an unusually diverse background that combined rigorous academic training in philosophy and law, experience in both government service and private practice, a distinguished career as a legal scholar and professor, and deep engagement with questions at the intersection of law, religion, and ethics. Appointed to the Ninth Circuit by President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, Noonan served as an active judge for over a decade before assuming senior status in 1996, continuing to contribute to the court's work for two additional decades until his death on April 17, 2017.

Early life and legal career

Noonan was born in Boston and began his higher education at Harvard University in 1944. He completed his undergraduate studies with remarkable speed, graduating summa cum laude just two years later with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. During his time at Harvard, he was an active contributor to the Harvard Crimson and earned election to Phi Beta Kappa, the prestigious academic honor society. Following his graduation from Harvard, Noonan spent a year studying at St. John's College, Cambridge, before returning to the United States to pursue graduate work in philosophy at the Catholic University of America. He earned a Master of Arts in philosophy in 1949 and completed a Doctor of Philosophy in the same field in 1951, demonstrating a commitment to rigorous philosophical inquiry that would later inform his approach to legal questions.

After completing his doctoral work, Noonan turned to the study of law, enrolling at Harvard Law School. He received his Bachelor of Laws degree in 1954, and during his time at the law school he served on the Harvard Law Review, one of the most prestigious positions available to law students. Upon graduating, Noonan entered government service, working from 1954 to 1955 as Special Staff to the United States National Security Council, where he assisted Robert Cutler, who was then serving as National Security Advisor. This early exposure to high-level government work provided Noonan with insight into the intersection of law, policy, and national security.

In 1955, Noonan transitioned to private practice, joining the Boston law firm of Herrick & Smith. While maintaining his legal practice, he also became involved in local government, serving as Chairman of the Brookline, Massachusetts Redevelopment Authority from 1958 to 1962. He assumed this position after prevailing in an election against Michael Dukakis, who would later become Governor of Massachusetts and the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988.

Noonan's career took an academic turn in 1961 when he was invited to join the faculty at Notre Dame Law School by the Reverend Theodore Hesburgh, the university's influential president. He was granted tenure three years later, in 1964. During this period, Noonan began producing scholarly work that would establish him as a leading authority on the relationship between law, morality, and Catholic theology. His book "Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists," published in 1965, was a comprehensive historical study that examined how Catholic teaching on contraception had developed over centuries. The scholarly rigor of this work led to his appointment as a historical consultant to a papal commission established by Pope Paul VI to examine questions related to birth control. The commission ultimately recommended relaxing the Church's prohibition on contraception, though that recommendation was not adopted by the Pope.

In 1966, Noonan moved to the University of California, Berkeley, joining the faculty at Boalt Hall, the university's law school. He eventually became the Robbins Professor of Law Emeritus, a position he held while also maintaining an active practice in select cases. One of his most notable representations during this period involved John Negre, a Catholic conscientious objector who argued that the Catholic Church's just war theory prohibited his participation in the Vietnam War. Noonan's advocacy on behalf of Negre initially resulted in Justice William O. Douglas ordering the Army not to deploy his client, though that stay was subsequently removed by the full Supreme Court on April 21, 1969. Noonan continued to represent Negre through additional filings, and the case was eventually argued before the Supreme Court, which ruled against Negre in the 1971 decision Gillette v. United States.

Throughout his academic career, Noonan maintained close ties to Catholic institutions and served in various advisory capacities. He worked as a consultant for several Church agencies, including Pope Paul VI's Commission on Problems of the Family and various committees of the U.S. Catholic Conference dealing with moral values, law and public policy, and law and life issues. He also served as a director of the National Right to Life Committee. In recognition of his contributions to the Catholic Church through his professional work, Noonan received the Laetare Medal in 1984, an honor awarded annually since 1883 by the University of Notre Dame to recognize outstanding service to the Church.

Federal appellate service

On October 16, 1985, President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, nominated Noonan to a newly created seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. This seat had been established by federal legislation to address the growing caseload of the nation's largest federal appellate circuit. The United States Senate confirmed Noonan's appointment on December 16, 1985, and he received his commission the following day, officially beginning his service as a federal circuit judge.

Noonan served as an active judge on the Ninth Circuit for over eleven years, participating in the resolution of numerous appeals across the wide range of legal issues that come before federal appellate courts. On December 27, 1996, he assumed senior status, a form of semi-retirement available to federal judges who meet certain age and service requirements. Senior status allowed Noonan to continue hearing cases and contributing to the work of the court while carrying a reduced caseload. He remained active in this capacity for more than two decades, continuing to serve until his death in 2017.

During his tenure on the bench, Noonan mentored numerous law clerks who went on to distinguished careers in law, academia, government, and other fields. His former clerks include Brian Morris, who became a United States District Judge; Richard Painter, who served as Chief Ethics Counsel in the White House and later joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota; Allison M. Danner, who became a Justice on the California Court of Appeal; Mary Fan, a professor at the University of Washington; Cathleen Kaveny, a professor at Boston College Law School; Ailsa Chang, who became a host for National Public Radio; Monica Youn, who pursued careers as both a poet and lawyer; and Nancy Staudt, who became Dean of Washington University School of Law.

Jurisprudence and legacy

Noonan's judicial opinions reflected the breadth of his intellectual background and his sustained engagement with questions of justice, human dignity, and the proper interpretation of legal texts. His decisions often demonstrated careful attention to the circumstances of individual litigants and a willingness to examine legal questions from multiple perspectives.

One of his significant opinions came in the 1987 case of Lazo-Majano v. INS. Writing for a panel that included Judge Harry Pregerson, Noonan addressed the asylum claim of Olimpia Lazo-Majano, a woman from El Salvador who had been repeatedly beaten, raped, and threatened by a Salvadoran army sergeant. Noonan's opinion held that the sergeant had imputed to Lazo-Majano a political opinion—specifically, that she was a subversive—and that she had therefore suffered persecution on account of political opinion, entitling her to asylum under applicable immigration statutes. In his analysis, Noonan articulated a principle that would prove influential in subsequent asylum law: that persecution based on an imputed political opinion, even if the victim held no such opinion, could satisfy the statutory requirements for asylum. He explained that the determination of whether someone faces persecution on account of political opinion must be made from the perspective of the persecutor, and that if the persecutor attributes a political opinion to the victim, the victim is at risk regardless of whether that opinion is actually held. This decision was later recognized as groundbreaking in the field of asylum law. At the thirtieth anniversary celebration of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, where Noonan delivered a keynote address, Harvard Law School Clinical Professor Deborah Anker acknowledged that the Lazo-Majano decision had inspired the entirety of her professional work in immigration law.

In another notable case, EEOC v. Townley Engineering & Manufacturing Company, decided in 1988, Noonan found himself in dissent. The majority of the Ninth Circuit panel held that Townley Engineering and Manufacturing Company, a closely held corporation whose founders had made a covenant with God that their business would operate as a Christian, faith-based enterprise, could not require employees to attend prayer services. The company had maintained that employees were not compelled to participate actively in the prayers—they could wear earplugs, read, or sleep during the services—but the majority found this arrangement nonetheless violated employees' rights. Noonan dissented from this holding, arguing that the First Amendment's guarantee of free exercise of religion extended to corporations as well as individuals. He wrote that nothing in the broad language of the amendment excluded corporations from its protection, and that corporations had repeatedly and successfully invoked the protections of the Religious Clauses. Drawing a parallel to corporate free speech rights under the First Amendment, Noonan argued that corporations similarly enjoyed free exercise protections. This dissenting opinion anticipated arguments that would later be adopted by the Supreme Court of the United States in its 2014 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which recognized that closely held corporations could assert religious liberty claims under federal statutory law.

Noonan's service on the federal bench spanned more than three decades, during which he contributed to the development of law across numerous areas while maintaining his scholarly interests and his engagement with questions of legal philosophy and ethics. He died on April 17, 2017, having served the federal judiciary and the legal profession with distinction throughout a career marked by intellectual rigor, moral seriousness, and a commitment to justice.