William J. Brennan Jr.

William Joseph Brennan Jr. lived from 1906 to 1997 and was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1956 to 1990, the eighth-longest serving justice in the Court's history and a leader of its liberal wing. Born to Irish immigrant parents in Newark, New Jersey, he studied economics at the University of Pennsylvania, attended Harvard Law School, entered private practice in New Jersey and served in the U.S. Army during World War II, before his 1951 appointment to the Supreme Court of New Jersey; President Dwight D. Eisenhower placed him on the U.S. Supreme Court by recess appointment shortly before the 1956 election, and the Senate confirmed him the following year. On the Court he was known for outspoken progressive views, including opposition to the death penalty, on which he dissented in more than 1,400 cases in which the majority declined to review a death sentence, and support for abortion rights and gay rights, authoring landmark opinions including Baker v. Carr, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, Eisenstadt v. Baird and Craig v. Boren.