Born: Wednesday, June 16th, 1909
Died: Wednesday, December 26th, 1984
Birthplace: Tacoma, Washington
Religion: Lutheran
Education: College of Puget Sound (1927-1929)
University of Washington, LL.B. (1933)
Career: State House of Representatives (1939-1945)
Superior Court (1948-1954)
Served: Monday, January 10th, 1955 to Monday, November 26th, 1984
Chief Justice: Monday, January 11th, 1965 to Monday, January 9th, 1967
Political Party: Democrat
Hugh J. Rosellini’s father and mother were both born in Florence, Italy, although their families had lived for generations in the small agricultural village of Lucca in the Tuscany region. Hugh’s father, Primo, arrived in America in 1898 at age fourteen and passed through Ellis Island to begin life in the new land. He obtained a job with the Northern Pacific Railroad in Chicago. Judge Rosellini recalled how his father worked up to a position of responsibility with the railroad: “They were building the railroad west. My dad could talk Italian and English so he eventually was taking care of payroll records for 400 Italians working on the railroad. . . He started with the railroad in Chicago, then progressed to the West Coast, ending up in Tacoma.”Rosellini’s father quit the railroad when he arrived in Tacoma and went into what Hugh called the “saloon” business, owning St. Helen’s Wine and Groceries. Primo Rosellini supplied all of the familiar Italian foods-in bulk-to the many Italians working on the railroad, in the mills, and in lumber camps. The saloon and store soon became the center of Italian social and political activities in Tacoma.
Hugh’s mother, Cesarini Marchetti, emigrated from Italy with her family. Her father and brothers also found work with the railroad. Primo, who had not known Cesarini in Lucca, met her in Lakehead, a small train stop near Tacoma. Primo was nineteen and Cesarini sixteen when they married. Hugh was born June 9, 1909, in Tacoma, the eldest child in a family which later included a son, Primo Jr., and a daughter, Doris. As was the tradition – and to ease burdens on the young Cesarini – Hugh’s grandparents raised him. He admitted they were not strict and tended to spoil him. However, both his parents and grandparents insisted that he become educated:
My grandparents came from Italy … It’s a place where you could escape your peasant status only by education. That and the ethic of working were drilled into me. You can’t achieve anything unless you work hard for it. Education was of the highest priority. The old Italians had high ethics and values. You respected older people. You believed in a Supreme Being.
The grandparents spoke only Italian in the house, which caused some difficulties for Hugh when he began school. Not proficient in English, his predominantly Norwegian and Swedish classmates soon singled him out for taunts and teasing. On a number of occasions the future judge got into fights on the playfield during and after school. But under the tutelage of a devoted third grade teacher, Hugh learned his fractions, read advanced books, and was quickly promoted, skipping the fourth grade entirely. In 1922 he enrolled in St. Martin’s High School in Lacey, near Olympia, where he learned, under the Benedictines, the discipline which became important in later college and law studies. An average student, he played on the school football and basketball teams. In the summers he worked in an Eatonville sawmill.
Orman Vertrees summed up Rosellini’s formative years:
A fighting pride in his Italian heritage coupled with a ferocious devotion to hard work, both manual and intellectual, characterized Hugh Rosellini’s early years … [T]aunts of “Wop” and “Dago” … instilled a strong sympathy for the underdog and an aversion to invidious discrimination … His working class background further prepared him to accept New Deal Democratic politics and economic policies with open arms.
Young Rosellini enrolled at the College of Puget Sound, a Methodist institution in Tacoma, still unsure of his career goals. One particular incident, however, brought them into focus. Hugh was involved in an auto accident while driving his father’s car, causing $400 in damages. A jury trial settled the issue of who was at fault, finding both drivers to be so. But the other driver had no money so Hugh’s father paid all. Hugh, fascinated by the trial procedures and the lawyers’ antics, decided to become a lawyer, and transferred to the University of Washington as a junior in 1929 at the onset of the depression.
During summers of those university years Hugh continued to work in the Eatonville mill; during the school months he lived with his grandparents. He took classes from Charles Horowitz, who later sat with Rosellini on the state supreme court. A classmate and old high school chum, Albert Rosellini, later became the governor of Washington. Although Al and Hugh were unrelated, they became fast friends, studied together, and talked politics. In 1933 Hugh graduated with his LL.B.
Passing the Washington bar exam proved easy compared to securing gainful employment during the winter of 1934 when the depression paralyzed business. Interviews with law firms proved fruitless so he opened his own law office. Hugh gradually developed a general practice making ends meet with court-appointed clients. He subsequently rented office space in Tacoma from Harry Arnold Patterson at $25 a month, with Patterson providing secretarial assistance free of charge. Partisan politics soon occupied much of Rosellini’s spare time.
Unemployment, the dislocations and deprivations of the Great Depression, and especially the anti-labor reactions of business and state government, thrust the future judge enthusiastically into Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal politics. He became active in the Young Democrats, joined the politically active Parkland Grange, the pro-labor Eagles, and campaigned for Democrats such as Homer Bone and Clarence Martin. In 1938 Hugh ran for the state house of representatives from Tacoma’s Twenty-eighth District. With assistance from his wife, a skilled campaigner, as well as Democratic clubs, the Grange, and ethnic groups, Rosellini, campaigning door-to-door, defeated the incumbent by a few hundred votes. He used his own money and small contributions to fund the campaign, which totaled but a few hundred dollars. Although railroad workers endorsed him, labor generally ignored Rosellini. This later changed when virtually all labor groups supported the young legislator.
Rosellini quickly established himself as a supporter of programs promoted by the Grange, labor, Eagles, Old Age Pension Union, and the liberal Washington Commonwealth Federation. Throughout Rosellini’s six-year legislative career he supported traditional liberal causes: adequate welfare programs for the truly needy, public housing and slum clearance, sufficient tax revenue to support public assistance programs begun in the depression, pro-labor legislation, public ownership of electric power, conservation measures, regulation of business, and civil rights. Vertrees summarized Rosellini’s legislative experience:
At the end of his seven-year legislative career in 1945, [Rosellini] could be described as a pro-labor, pro-environment, pro-education, pro-civil liberties liberal Democrat who at the same time could handle himself well in the muddy trenches of political warfare.
Rosellini, recognized for his leadership abilities, won a place on the powerful House Rules Committee. From that position he met on a regular basis with Governor Mon C. Wallgren and they became close political and personal friends.
Because the burdens of legislative affairs cut into his law practice, Rosellini did not file for another term after the 1945 session. Instead, he ran unsuccessfully for Pierce County Prosecutor. Thereafter, he settled into a sole law practice However, when Judge Edward Hodge of the Pierce County Superior Court died early in 1948, Rosellini’s friends urged Governor Wallgren to appoint the thirty-seven year old to the vacancy. On January 5, the governor did so and Rosellini began a judicial career that spanned thirty-six years.
Although a successful trial jurist, Rosellini decided to run for the state supreme court in 1950. Unknown in much of the state, he seemed to be embarking on an impossible task by filing against incumbent appointee Frederick Hamley. Rosellini said he had made the choice “because when you’re young, anything seems possible.” Governor Arthur Langlie’s powerful Republican organization backed Hamley and, after Rosellini led in the primary, west-side newspapers and religious, Republican, and legal establishments rallied around the incumbent, turning the results of the September primary around. Judge Hamley defeated Rosellini in the statewide race by fewer than 10,000 votes. Judge Rosellini remembered that campaign for its bitterness and what he regarded as unfair and unethical tactics. Responding to allegations of his own unethical behavior, Rosellini wrote:
In some campaigns malicious rumors are spread to discredit one candidate and this ensures the election of another … A Judge should be above such conduct. He should be just and fair even in the heat of a political race with his future at stake. It is my considered belief that a Judge should remain courteous in the face of political clamor and indifferent to partisan influences … “With Malice Toward None”, I seek your vote.
Rosellini never forgot that campaign. In 1954 he tried again for a spot on the state’s high bench. Chief Justice Thomas Grady, then seventy-four years old, withdrew from a reelection bid as only one year remained before the mandatory retirement law would force him to leave. Superior Court Judge Richard Ott from Adams County ran for the vacancy, facing Rosellini. Since only two candidates filed, the September primary would determine the winner. Labor and the Grange backed Rosellini and the legal establishment supported Ott. Relying on the name familiarity gained in 1950, Rosellini swamped Ott, 217,660 to 185,607. Rosellini would run unopposed in two of his remaining four supreme court reelection bids, and face only token opposition in the others.
Even before Rosellini wrote his first opinion, the media and the legal profession correctly regarded him as a liberal jurist. However, this did not isolate him from his conservative brethren. Until near the end of his long career on the state’s high bench, the judge received more than his share of supporting votes when he wrote majority, concurring, or dissenting opinions. However, in the last ten years of his long tenure he tended to be less liberal and to dissent more often from the opinions of the majority. This shift was partly due to Rosellini’s less liberal stand on some law and order issues-particularly search and seizure-and to the more liberal stance of the court itself.
With perhaps one exception, Rosellini remained a strong supporter of individual civil rights and a staunch backer of the state constitution’s Declaration of Rights. That exception concerned Indian treaty rights affecting fishing, hunting, and taxation. Rosellini, an avid hunter and fisherman, disagreed with Judge George Boldt’s decision declaring that Indians should receive at least one-half of the fishing harvest from traditional fishing grounds. Rosellini generally supported labor in labor-management issues; favored the government in government regulation and taxation cases; sided often with the underdog in housing, welfare, and workmen’s compensation; and agreed with the plaintiff in tort cases.
Despite disagreements with the bench’s more conservative members, Judge Rosellini provided stability and leadership. Judge Frank Hale, who served with Rosellini, recognized these traits in his colleague:
[In conference] Hugh was always very pleasant. He liked to go to the blackboard and draw away. He’d lecture like a law professor. He’d draw boxes for the plaintiff and defendant and then draw big slashes when he’d come to a conclusion … He did this more than anyone else. Hugh would be a peacemaker if the judges did show personality splits. He would try to erase any acrimony.
Given Rosellini’s years in public office, his easy-going manner, soft, unassuming voice, and polite old-world manners, it is not surprising that he played such a reconciling role.
Oral arguments, supplemented by queries from the judges, proved important to Justice Rosellini’s deliberations. Along with the written briefs filed by the attorneys, oral arguments influenced his decisions more than the pre-hearing memos written by law clerks, conference discussions, or the circulation of draft opinions. When Rosellini dissented, as he did in nearly one-fourth of the cases during his later years on the bench, he saw his actions as vehicles to win more votes from his colleagues, to lay groundwork for future cases, and to improve the court’s opinion.
While chief justice from 1965-1967, Rosellini served as chairman of the nationally recognized state bench-bar-press committee established to reconcile conflict between free press and fair trial rights. He also influenced the legislature to propose and the public to approve a court of appeals for the state. He served as a member of the judging panel for the Roscoe Pound hearing of the moot court honors program at UCLA in 1968 and mediated between the judiciary and the Alaska Bar Association during the writing of Alaska’s Code of Ethics. He belonged to the American Judicature Society, served on the board of directors of the Tacoma Boy’s Club, and in 1981 won the Pierce Chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews “Outstanding Citizen” award. He also belonged to the Elks, Moose, Eagles, and Grange. But perhaps most of all, Justice Rosellini loved fishing and hunting with old friends:
[He worked] hard, but he played with the same enthusiasm he devoted to his work. His leisure hours were spent in pursuit of salmon and steelhead in Western Washington waters. He was an avid fly-fisherman, a duck and pheasant hunter, and he also enjoyed moose hunting in Canada. Justice Rosellini was a connoisseur of fine dogs, fine fish, fine game, and good cooking. He loved nothing more than freezing with his friends Bob Hunter and Jim Bates while they wet their lines and made sure many a big salmon or steelhead never got away.
The justice earned an intense loyalty from those who worked with him. His law clerk, Joanne Baily Wilson, served as his assistant for twenty-six years. Rose Gittings was his administrative assistant for twenty-nine years.
Hugh married Yvonne Crissy, a ballet dancer and teacher, in 1938. They became parents of a son, Tracy, and two daughters, Gayle and Lynne. Yvonne died in September 1982 at the age of sixty-seven. A few weeks later the justice had triple bypass heart surgery. In October 1984 he submitted to more open-heart surgery, and died the next month, a few weeks from the end of his last term on the bench. He had served on the supreme court nearly thirty years, a term exceeded by only two other justices. The record of his judicial career is found in over 800 of his opinions published in fifty-seven volumes of the Washington Reports.
Selected References
Rosellini’s oral history interview is in the supreme court collection, Washington State Archives. Also see Orman Vertrees, “Mr. Justice Hugh J. Rosellini: A Study of His Reference Groups and His Supreme Court Voting Behavior” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Washington State University, 1986); Seattle Times, 29 Oct. 1978; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 17 Jy. 1977; Washington State Bar News (Jan. 1984), p. 26; and memorial services, Washington Reports, vol. 103, 2d (1985), pp. xxviii-xlviii.
The preceding biography is from Charles Sheldon's The Washington High Bench: A Biographical History of the State Supreme Court, 1889-1991, © 1992 by the Board of Regents of Washington State University. Reprinted here with permission and licensed to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by The Temple of Justice Project.
