Joseph Jerome Farris

Joseph Jerome Farris was a United States circuit judge who served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1979 to 1995. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1930, he became one of the early African American jurists to serve on the federal appellate bench. Appointed by President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, Farris brought to the court a distinctive background that included social work education, military service, private legal practice, and pioneering service on Washington State's intermediate appellate court. His federal judicial career spanned sixteen years of active service before he assumed senior status in 1995. He passed away in Seattle, Washington, in 2020 at the age of ninety.

Early life and legal career

Joseph Jerome Farris was born on March 4, 1930, in Birmingham, Alabama, during an era of strict racial segregation in the American South. He pursued his undergraduate education at Morehouse College, a historically Black institution in Atlanta, Georgia, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1951. Following his graduation, Farris worked as a civil servant radar instructor at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi from July 1951 through February of the following year. His civilian service was followed by military duty when he entered the United States Army Signal Corps in March 1952. He served at Camp Gordon, Georgia, and Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, until February 1953, completing his service with the rank of private first class.

After his military discharge, Farris pursued graduate education in social work, earning a Master of Social Work degree from Atlanta University (later known as Clark Atlanta University) in 1955. This educational background in social services was unusual for someone who would later become a federal judge and reflected a broader interest in understanding human behavior and social systems. Farris then moved to the Pacific Northwest to attend the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle, where he distinguished himself academically. He graduated with a Juris Doctor degree in 1958 and earned membership in the Order of the Coif, an honor society recognizing exceptional law school achievement.

Upon completing his legal education, Farris entered private practice in Seattle, where he worked for more than a decade from 1958 to 1969. During this period, he practiced with various partners, including Leonard W. Schroeter, handling a range of legal matters in the Seattle legal community. His private practice years established him as a respected attorney in Washington State and laid the groundwork for his subsequent judicial career.

In 1969, Farris was selected to serve as one of the initial judges on the newly created Washington Court of Appeals, Division One, located in Seattle. This intermediate appellate court had been established to handle the growing caseload of appeals in Washington's state court system. Farris served in this capacity for a full decade, from 1969 to 1979, gaining substantial experience in appellate decision-making and legal analysis. His tenure on the state appellate bench provided him with the expertise and judicial temperament that would later inform his work on the federal circuit court.

Federal appellate service

On July 12, 1979, President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, nominated Farris to fill a newly created seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. This seat had been authorized by federal legislation expanding the federal judiciary. The United States Senate confirmed the nomination on September 26, 1979, and Farris received his commission the following day, on September 27, 1979. He thereby joined the largest of the federal circuit courts, which has jurisdiction over appeals from federal district courts in Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, as well as from Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Farris served as an active circuit judge for sixteen years, participating in the resolution of numerous appeals across the wide range of legal issues that come before the Ninth Circuit. The court handles matters involving federal criminal law, civil rights, immigration, environmental regulation, intellectual property, and many other areas of federal law. During his tenure, Farris contributed to the development of federal jurisprudence in the western United States and helped manage the substantial caseload that characterizes the nation's largest circuit.

On March 4, 1995, his sixty-fifth birthday, Farris assumed senior status, a form of semi-retirement available to federal judges who meet certain age and service requirements. Senior status judges continue to hear cases on a reduced schedule, allowing them to contribute to the court's work while creating a vacancy for a new active judge. M. Margaret McKeown was subsequently appointed to fill the active seat that Farris had vacated.

Throughout his judicial career, Farris mentored numerous law clerks who went on to distinguished legal careers of their own. Among those who clerked for him were Gregory Mandel, who later became Dean of Temple University Beasley School of Law, and Brenda K. Sannes, who was later appointed as a United States District Judge for the Northern District of New York. These clerkships provided young attorneys with valuable training in federal appellate practice and judicial reasoning.

Jurisprudence and legacy

Farris participated in several significant cases during his time on the Ninth Circuit. In 1987, he sat on a circuit panel that heard a coram nobis petition in a case related to the World War II-era internment of Japanese Americans. The panel unanimously vacated an exclusion order conviction that had previously been upheld by the United States Supreme Court during the wartime period. This decision was part of a broader legal reckoning with the injustices of the internment policy and reflected evolving understanding of civil liberties and equal protection under the Constitution.

In 1997, Farris published an article addressing criticism frequently directed at the Ninth Circuit, particularly the observation that it is the circuit most often reversed by the Supreme Court. He argued that this reversal rate should not be attributed to judicial error or ideological bias, but rather to the fact that the circuit handles a large volume of cases involving controversial and cutting-edge legal questions. He suggested that courts cannot determine right and wrong in an absolute sense because the law itself is not absolute, reflecting a nuanced understanding of the judicial role in a complex legal system.

Despite being appointed by a Democratic president, Farris was characterized by his colleague Stephen Reinhardt as extremely conservative on criminal justice issues, illustrating that judicial philosophy does not always align neatly with the political affiliation of appointing presidents. This aspect of his jurisprudence demonstrated the independence and complexity of judicial decision-making on the federal bench.

Beyond his judicial duties, Farris remained engaged in educational and civic activities. In 1985, he was appointed by Governor Mike Lowry to serve a six-year term as a Regent of the University of Washington, his law school alma mater. He was subsequently reappointed by Governor Gary Locke and served in that capacity until 1997, helping to govern one of the nation's leading public research universities. Beginning in 1999, he also served on the Board of Trustees of Morehouse College, his undergraduate institution, which had awarded him an honorary Doctor of Law degree in 1978.

Farris married Jean Marie Shy on June 27, 1957, in King County, Washington, and the couple had two daughters, Juli and Janelle. Jean passed away on December 2, 1992. Jerome Farris died on July 23, 2020, in Seattle, concluding a life that spanned nine decades and included significant contributions to the federal judiciary and legal education in the Pacific Northwest.