Judge Clifford Scott Green dies at 84

Senior U.S. District Court Judge Clifford Scott Green, 84, a pioneering Philadelphia lawyer who became a nationally recognized jurist, died Thursday.

Judge Green had been in good health but suffered a cerebral hemorrhage last weekend, said a family spokeswoman. He underwent emergency surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and died of pneumonia, said the spokeswoman, Stephanie Franklin-Suber, a lawyer and a former law clerk.

During the 1950s, Judge Green was a prominent member of the city's first African American law firm. He spent most of the 1960s as a juvenile and Common Pleas Court judge, and most of the 1970s and 1980s as a federal judge. He went to semi-retired status in 1988.

"He was a remarkable figure," said Senior U.S. District Judge Louis H. Pollak. "I cannot overstate how good a judge Clifford Green was. There was a serenity about him. He understood the human context of the cases that he handled, but he was not sentimental."

His longtime law clerk, Leslie Marant, said Judge Green was "was a scholar and a distinguished jurist, but certainly not self-important."

"He was a very patient, measured man - slow to speak but quick to listen," she said.

Theodore McKee, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and a friend, said that he admired Judge Green's humanity as much as his legal acumen.

"He never allowed the paper – the complaints, the indictment, the motions - to obscure the people," McKee said. "He had incredible sensitivity, particularly for a judge. . . . Cliff never got hardened; he was able to maintain a sensitivity in a way that I always admired."

Judge Green handled a wide range of cases. In 1975, for example, he ordered the Pennsylvania State Police to hire one minority trooper for every white trooper; set a blind heroin dealer free because the prison system had no services for the sightless; and wrote a opinion that struck down a state law requiring a married woman to get a husband's consent for an abortion.

"He was a fundamentally decent man - I don't know how to put it better that," said Michael Levy, a veteran federal prosecutor in Philadelphia. "There were times when I disagreed with him because he was more defense-oriented than I would have liked, but he was always fair."

Judge Green was born in 1923 in Philadelphia after his father moved here from the U.S. Virgin Islands. According to a biography prepared by his law clerks, Judge Green's parents and siblings left school to support the family, but he graduated from high school.

During World War II, he served as a sergeant in the Army Air Corps. He graduated from Temple University in 1948. He expected to become a certified public accountant, but when a faculty adviser explained that there were no jobs for black accountants, he enrolled in Temple's law school.

He won numerous academic awards in law school and received the highest grade on the 1951 Pennsylvania bar exam, said his friend William T. Coleman Jr., a former U.S. secretary of transportation.

Judge Green worked in private practice from 1952 to 1964 at Norris, Schmidt, Green, Harris & Higginbotham, the city's only African American law firm.

The future success of the firm's lawyers - Green, A. Leon Higginbotham, Doris Mae Harris and Harvey Schmidt were among those who became judges - opened doors for scores of other African American lawyers, several contemporaries said.

"They helped a lot of us break through to major law firms," Coleman said.

Judge Green served as a judge of the Court of Common Pleas from 1964 to 1972. There, he volunteered to hear juvenile cases.

"He was an inspirer, a strong man with a quiet and gentle manner whose wisdom and humanity touched the lives of many," said Acel Moore, associate editor emeritus of The Inquirer, who covered Judge Green as a court reporter for the newspaper in the 1970s.

Judge Green was nominated to the federal bench by President Richard M. Nixon in 1971.

In 1985, Judge Green became the first recipient of the Judge William Hastie Award from the NAACP. In 2002, the American Bar Association gave him its Spirit of Excellence Award.

Judge Green is survived by his wife, Carole Chew Williams Green; daughter, Terri; a stepdaughter, Lisa Dawn Smith, and stepsons State Sen. Anthony H. Williams and Clifford Kelly Williams; and a granddaughter. His son, David Scott Green, and first wife, Mabel Louise Green, died earlier.

A viewing will be from 6 to 9 p.m. Wednesday evening and 8 to 11 a.m. Thursday at Oxford Presbyterian Church, 8501 Stenton Ave. The funeral will follow at the church. Internment will be at West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Bala Cynwyd.

Donations may be made to the Oxford Presbyterian Church scholarship fund or to the Temple Law School Clifford Scott Green Lectureship.