ABA Awards 2005 ABA Medal to Crusading Chicago Civil Rights Lawyer George N. Leighton

CHICAGO, June 23, 2005 –The 2005 American Bar Association Medal, the association’s highest award, will be presented to George N. Leighton, a retired federal trial court judge in Chicago whose ongoing career of protecting human rights in Chicago has spanned nearly 60 years. He will receive the award during the ABA House of Delegates meeting Aug. 8-9 in Chicago.

ABA President Robert J. Grey Jr. said, “It is an honor for the ABA to recognize this valiant champion of human dignity. As a lawyer, he put his own career on the line for the sake of his clients, to the point that he faced indictment for inciting a riot because he fought in court to secure safe residency for an African-American family attempting to move into a segregated Chicago suburb in 1951. He represented those accused of crimes and those denied their rights, with a passionate commitment to assuring that government operates according to law. As a judge, he upheld the free speech rights of African­ Americans and Nazis, protecting the rights of all.”

“George Leighton’s path to the law was extraordinary,” said Grey. “He was the child of immigrants from the Portuguese Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa, a youngster who left school after the sixth grade to work on an oil tanker sailing from Massachusetts to Aruba and who never attended high school, but who earned the right to attend and to graduate from Harvard Law School.”

After working as a ship cook’s assistant, and in restaurant kitchens, Leighton took correspondence and night school classes in New Bedford, Mass. He won conditional admission to Howard University in 1936, when for the first time he used English as his primary language, rather than the Portuguese dialect spoken in his childhood home. He was graduated magna cum laude from Howard in 1940, and elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He was granted a scholarship to Harvard Law School, where his attendance was interrupted by three years’ service in the U.S. Army.

Leighton arrived in Chicago in 1946, and practiced civil rights and criminal defense law until he was elected judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County in 1964, and appointed to the First District Appellate Court of Illinois in 1969. He was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in 1976.

As a practicing lawyer, Leighton has been active in the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Independent Voters of Illinois, the Cosmopolitan Chamber of Commerce, the Citizens Committee for the Adoption of the Fair Employment Practice Act, the Committee for the Adoption of an Open Occupancy Statute and the Mayor’s Citizens Committee on City Revenue and Expenditures.

Leighton has represented more than 200 criminal defendants in bench and jury trials, and handled more than 175 appeals and reviews in civil and criminal cases in state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States. Among them were successful challenges to an Alabama constitutional amendment establishing a constitutional knowledge test as a prerequisite to voting, and to a segregated public school system in Harrisburg, Ill. In 1951 he won a ruling that prosecutors had violated the rights of a youth under life sentence in the murder a Western Union guard by failing to disclose evidence of his innocence, and that the defendant’s confession had been coerced. After a retrial ended in acquittal, the Illinois General Assembly awarded the defendant the unprecedented payment of $51,000, which was personally delivered by the governor. At one point, Leighton was appointed as post‑conviction counsel to all men held on death row in the Cook County jail.

After retiring from the bench in 1987 at the age of 75, Leighton returned to legal practice to try civil and criminal cases. He began teaching law students at John Marshall Law School in 1964, and continued until last year. He also has taught lawyers for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy, and grade and high school students for the Constitutional Rights Foundation of Chicago.

The ABA Medal is given only in years when the ABA Board of Governors determines a nominee has rendered exceptionally distinguished service to the cause of American jurisprudence. Among previous recipients are legendary justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, including Thurgood Marshall, who defended Leighton against the 1951 indictment, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Felix Frankfurter and William J. Brennan Jr., and Sandra Day O’Connor, who serves on the court now.

With more than 400,000 members, the American Bar Association is the largest voluntary professional membership organization in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law in a democratic society.

Editors Note: Accredited reporters are welcome to attend and cover all events during the 2005 ABA Annual Meeting. Credentials will be available in the ABA Press Room in the Hyatt Regency Chicago, Riverside Center, Purple Level, East Tower beginning at noon Aug. 4. Reporters may register for the meeting online at www.abanews.org.