On October 31,1963 while on a routine beat through downtown Cleveland, Detective Martin McFadden noticed three men
pacing in front of a jewelry store on Euclid Avenue. McFadden identified himself as a police officer and asked them their names. When the men “mumbled something” in response, McFadden frisked them and found a pistol in John Terry’s overcoat pocket and a revolver in Richard Chilton’s coat pocket. McFadden arrested and charged Terry and Chilton with carrying concealed weapons. These are some of the underlying facts ofthe famous case, Terry v. Ohio. Known as the “stop and frisk” case, it is listed as one of the 25 top constitutional law cases in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. The attorney who argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court on December 12, 1967 was Cleveland lawyer and Cleveland-Marshall graduate, Louis Stokes '53.
(see The Hero Who Challenged Stop-and-Frisk)
We have many distinguished C|M|Law Alumni, but none more distinguished than the late Congressman Louis Stokes '53. Last week, we hosted the C|MLaw Forum on the Legacy of the Gentleman from Ohio in honor of the new book, The Gentleman from Ohio, the autobiography of Congressman Stokes. C|M|Law Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich, moderated the panel discussion about Terry v. Ohio and the extraordinary life of Congressman Stokes. The panel included Lori Stokes, daughter of Lou and Jay Stokes and ABC news co-anchor in New York City, Brett Hammond, grandson of Lou and Jay Stokes and assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor; and David Chanoff, noted collaborator of the Stokes autobiography. Dean Craig Boise, my predecessor, now Dean of Syracuse University College of Law, gave an eloquent video tribute to Congressman Stokes.
As Congressman John Lewis notes in the book foreward, “ With all his political achievements, Louis Stokes was not at heart a politician. He got great fulfillment from his life in Congress, but his first and last love was the law. As a twelve-year old newspaper delivery boy in Cleveland he read about the Scottsboro boys, lynchings, and other racial cruelty in the South and dreamed of becoming a lawyer who could defend his people from that kind of injustice.”
His distinguished career not only in Congress but also in his own law firm which he founded with his brother, Cleveland Mayor Carl B. Stokes '56, and later with SquirePattonBoggs, is further testament to his love of the law. Below are some excerpts from The Gentleman from Ohio that I urge all our students to read.
(See other excerpts here: Book Excerpts by PD Columnist Brent Larkin '86)
“Cleveland Marshall was exactly the right place….For four years, from 1949 to 1953, I worked during the day and went to school from six to ten every night. As tired as I might have been, I came to most of my classes full of excitement and anticipation…..As my studies progressed at Cleveland Marshall I was aware that I was experiencing a kind of mental or intellectual metamorphosis. The fact is that there’s nothing quite like the law…. I understood that I wasn’t simply absorbing knowledge, learning cases and principles – my mind was being trained to a way of thinking. I was absorbing a certain kind of logical, philosophical approach to processing and presenting information. I was seeing how you apply law to facts, how you sort out the more persuasive from the less persuasive points in order to outthink your opponent and achieve your ends.” - Congressman Louis Stokes ’53, The Gentleman from Ohio.
Congressman Stokes was a friend and mentor to me for more than 35 years, and I have had the privilege of knowing members of his wonderful family, including Lou’s daughter, Shelley Stokes-Hammond, my high school classmate. Congressman Louis Stokes ‘53 was the epitome of our motto, Learn Law. Live Justice.