[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 43 (Thursday, April 6, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E529-E530]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      IN HONOR OF CALEB FOOTE LAW PROFESSOR AND PACIFIST ORGANIZER

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, April 5, 2006

  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to remember and honor one of 
America's great teachers and scholars of law and an inspirational 
figure for everyone who believes in the creative spirit of non-
violence, Mr. Caleb Foote, who passed away on March 4, 2006.
  Caleb Foote began his life journey in Massachusetts. He was born in 
Cambridge in 1917, graduated from Harvard in 1939, and earned his 
master's degree in 1941. He was raised on Quaker beliefs and held deep 
principles that rejected the use of violence. During the period of 
World War II he was sent to prison for those beliefs when he refused to 
serve in the military or to perform alternative service in support of 
war. After completing his prison sentence, he spoke out against the 
internment of Japanese-Americans, working with photographer Dorothy 
Lange to produce a pamphlet on the subject in 1943. He was forced to 
serve a second term in prison for continuing to refuse the draft, but 
he was pardoned by no one less than President Harry S. Truman.
  In the 1950s, Mr. Foote went back to college and earned his law 
degree. For the remainder of his career, he taught law and became a 
leading champion for the rights of the poor, the young, minorities, and 
the disenfranchised within the criminal justice system. Even after he 
retired, he continued his research and exposed the failures of the 
juvenile justice system in California.
  America has lost a champion of justice and a man of principle. I 
extend my condolences to all the members of Caleb Foote's family and 
his community of friends, who knew him not as a symbol, but as a 
husband, a father, a grandfather, a friend, and a colleague.

[[Page E530]]

  I submit for the Record the April 3, 2006 article from the New York 
Times describing Caleb Foote's life and achievements.

                [From the New York Times, Apr. 3, 2006]

      Caleb Foote, Law Professor and Pacifist Organizer, 88, Dies

                          (By Douglas Martin)

       Caleb Foote, whose moral sense influenced him to go to 
     prison for refusing to do even noncombatant work in World War 
     II, then led him to become a law professor known for advocacy 
     of criminal rights, died on March 4 at a hospital in Santa 
     Rosa, California. He was 88.
       The cause was a blood infection, said his daughter, Heather 
     Foote.
       Mr. Foote was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on March 
     26, 1917. He graduated in 1939 from Harvard, where he was 
     managing editor of The Harvard Crimson, and earned a master's 
     degree in economics in 1941.
       The Quaker faith of his mother drew him to pacifism, and he 
     was hired that year by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a 
     pacifist organization, to open its Northern California 
     office. His draft board had denied his request for 
     conscientious objector status in 1940, deciding that his 
     religious argument for the status was based more on humanist 
     principles than on theology.
       Mr. Foote then refused an order to report to a camp to 
     perform alternative service, and as a result in 1943 he was 
     convicted for violations of the Selective Service Act.
       ``Only by my refusal to obey this order can I uphold my 
     belief that evil must be opposed not by violence but by the 
     creation of goodwill throughout the world,'' Mr. Foote said 
     in an interview with The Associated Press.
       He served six months at a federal prison camp, then resumed 
     his work with the fellowship, spending much of his time 
     speaking out against the internment of Japanese-Americans. In 
     1943, he helped produce a pamphlet on the subject, titled 
     ``Outcasts,'' with the photographer Dorothea Lange.
       In 1945, Mr. Foote was again sentenced for draft law 
     violations and served a year at a federal penitentiary. He 
     was pardoned by President Harry S. Truman. From 1948 to 1950, 
     Mr. Foote was executive director of the Central Committee for 
     Conscientious Objectors.
       He then decided to go to law school, inspired by the desire 
     to address the racial and economic inequalities he had 
     witnessed in the criminal justice system, his daughter said. 
     In 1953, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law 
     School, where he was managing editor of the law review.
       The next year, he became a professor at the University of 
     Nebraska College of Law. He persuaded a federal judge to 
     reverse the conviction of an American Indian man whose lawyer 
     had been incompetent. At a law school convention in New York 
     in 1954, Mr. Foote called for the strengthening of civil 
     remedies for false arrest.
       In 1956, he moved to Penn's law school, where he led a 
     student team that studied New York City's bail system and 
     recommended changes. He became a leader in bail reform, and, 
     in 1966, his book, ``Studies on Bail'' was published. He 
     argued that the bail system was biased against the poor and 
     an unfair burden on falsely accused defendants. He even 
     argued that bail was inherently unconstitutional.
       In 1965, Mr. Foote became a professor at the Boalt School 
     of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, where he 
     specialized in family and criminal law.
       In 1968, after student protests rocked Berkeley, he was a 
     co-chairman of an investigative committee that recommended 
     changes that included giving the campus autonomy from the 
     rest of California's university system.
       He retired in 1987 and moved to Point Reyes Station in 
     Marin County, California, where he became active in local 
     conservation efforts and lived until his death.
       In 1993, he did a study for the Center on Juvenile and 
     Criminal Justice in San Francisco showing that the 
     corrections department's share of state expenditures had 
     grown to 8.2 percent from 3.9 percent over the past 10 years, 
     while higher education's part had fallen to 9.3 percent from 
     14.4 percent.
       Besides his daughter, of Washington, Mr. Foote is survived 
     by his wife of 63 years, the former Hope Stephens; their 
     sons, Robert Foote of Copper Hill, Virginia; Andrew Eliot 
     Foote of Los Angeles; Ethan Foote of Santa Rosa; and David 
     Foote of Volcano, Hawaii; and four grandchildren.

                          ____________________