[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 147 (Tuesday, September 12, 2017)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1207]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   REMEMBERING JUDGE DICKSON PHILLIPS

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. DAVID E. PRICE

                           of north carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 12, 2017

  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor one of 
North Carolina's finest and most distinguished citizens, James Dickson 
Phillips, Jr., former Dean of the Law School of the University of North 
Carolina-Chapel Hill and former judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for 
the Fourth Circuit. Judge Phillips died at home in Chapel Hill on 
August 27, at the age of 94.
  A native of Scotland County, North Carolina, Dickson Phillips 
attended the public schools of Laurinburg and then Davidson College, 
where his athletic, academic, and leadership abilities became evident. 
He joined the army upon graduation in 1943. He was commissioned a 
lieutenant in the 17th Airborne Division and led his platoon as part of 
Operation Varsity, the largest single-day airborne assault in history. 
He was badly wounded in a firefight with retreating Germans and was 
awarded a Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his service.
  Phillips enrolled in the UNC-Chapel Hill Law School after the war. He 
excelled as a student and in the practice of law and was invited to 
join the faculty in 1960. He was named Dean in 1964 and served for ten 
years. The present Dean, Martin Brinkley, describes him as one of the 
school's greatest deans and a ``trailblazer'':
  By the fall of his second year as dean, total enrollment at the law 
school had more than doubled. The faculty also nearly doubled in size 
during his deanship. Dean Phillips hired Carolina Law's first African-
American visiting faculty member, Harry Groves, and its first full-time 
African-American member, Charles Daye. There was only one African-
American student at the law school when Phillips became dean; by 1973, 
there were 23, along with two Native American and one Latino students. 
The ten women students who enrolled during his first year had swelled 
to 121 by the time he left.
  During his 10 years as dean, Phillips inaugurated the Holderness Moot 
court program and the McCall Teaching Award. Small section classes were 
instituted for first-year students, and the upper-class curriculum 
greatly expanded. The first-ever clinical classes were sponsored. By 
far the largest fundraising effort in the law school's history up to 
the time was successfully executed, while the 10-year North Carolina 
bar passage rate among Carolina Law graduates averaged 95.8 Percent.
  President Jimmy Carter in 1978 appointed Dickson Phillips to a seat 
on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, where he served until 1994--the 
``greatest judge produced in North Carolina'', in the judgment of 
former UNC Law School Dean Gene Nichol ``since (eighteenth-century US 
Supreme Court Justice James) Iredell.''
  As was recalled in his obituary, ``His role as an appellate judge 
brought together his great personal attributes of precision, clarity 
and wisdom along with a love of justice and mercy and a generous but 
realistic understanding of human nature and foibles . . . He brought 
both a long view of history and the particular experience of life in 
North Carolina of the Depression and post-war years to his decisions.''
  Judge Phillips' major cases involved some of the most contentious 
issues of the day--minority voting rights, gerrymandering, and sex 
discrimination. In a series of decisions beginning in 1982 with the 
Gingles case and continuing into the 1990s with the Shaw decisions, he 
led three-judge federal panels in rejecting state legislative 
districting that diluted minority voting strength, and upholding as 
constitutional majority-minority congressional districting. These cases 
remain important in enabling African-Americans to achieve 
representation in state legislatures and Congress. In the sex 
discrimination area, he dissented from the Fourth Circuit panel's 
finding that the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) could 
constitutionally provide a ``separate but equal'' program for women, a 
position that the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately adopted.
  Over the years, Dickson Phillips served on many other fronts--as a 
trustee of Davidson College, a founding trustee of the NC Nature 
Conservatory, and first chairman of the state Ethics Commission. He and 
his wife Jean were faithful members of the University Presbyterian 
Church in Chapel Hill, where they both served in many leadership roles.
  I consider myself fortunate to have known Dickson Phillips late in 
his career--a man of great dignity, a source of wise counsel, always 
generous with words of encouragement and support. Stories abound of his 
great kindness, never too busy to relate to aspiring students, law 
clerks, and citizens of all walks of life. We grieve his loss with his 
family and friends, even as we express our gratitude for a life of 
great integrity and accomplishment, with positive consequences for 
those he touched, and for even more who may never know his name.

                          ____________________