Born: Wednesday, February 2nd, 1870
Died: Monday, April 29th, 1940
Birthplace: County Mayo, Ireland
Religion: Catholic
Education: Georgetown University Law School (1898)
Career: State Legislature (1897)
Spokane Corporate Counsel (1905-1907; 1916-1932)
Director of Efficiency (1933)
Served: Tuesday, August 15th, 1933 to Monday, April 29th, 1940
Political Party: Democrat
Appointing Governor: Martin (Democrat)
James M. Geraghty was born in 1870 in County Mayo, Ireland. His parents, Patrick and Bridget (Haley) Geraghty, brought their family to America in 1880 and settled on a farm in Indiana. James went to public school in Rush County, Indiana, before moving to Spokane in 1892. First employed as a teamster, he decided to improve his lot by enrolling in business school. He then found employment as a stenographer in the legal department of the corporate counsel of the City of Spokane, and the experience convinced him to study law.He began studying law in the office of city attorney W. H. Plummer while making $50 a month as Plummer’s assistant. In 1896, running on the Fusion ticket (Democrats, Populists, and Free Silver Republicans), Geraghty became the youngest member of the Washington House of Representatives. While in Olympia he took the state bar exam and was admitted to practice in 1897. The 1897 legislature elected Judge George Turner of Spokane as United States Senator, and Turner took Geraghty to Washington, D. C. as his private secretary. While in the nation’s capital, Geraghty attended class for one year at Georgetown University Law School. In 1900 Geraghty returned to Spokane to practice law with John P. Judson and later joined Judge Turner when the senator’s term ended. In 1905 Geraghty gained appointment to a two-year term as Spokane Corporate Counsel under a Democratic administration. In 1916 a nonpartisan city administration called him back to that office and he served until his selection as a key member of Governor Clarence Martin’s cabinet.
As Spokane’s city attorney, Geraghty was in the center of city government. As he described his responsibilities: “I have become a sort of unofficial adviser in everything … They come to me on nearly everything, probably because I have been around the city hall so long.” Geraghty also became a leading spokesman for Spokane city government throughout the state, and for Democrats generally during legislative sessions in Olympia. He attended several Democratic national conventions and headed the Washington delegation to the Chicago convention in 1928. Even so, he disliked the limelight. When advising others he chose his words carefully, and was little known outside of politics and government. But those within the corridors of power admired him and sought him out. When the Democrats swept into office in the 1932 landslide, new governor Clarence Martin, from eastern Washington, chose his old friend and advisor James Geraghty as his first cabinet appointee to head the Department of Efficiency. According to one newspaper account of Geraghty’s appointment:
As efficiency director Mr. Geraghty will have control of the vitally important offices of supervisor of banks and banking and supervisor of savings and loans. Governor Martin has said he expects Mr. Geraghty to thoroughly reorganize the banking department, his aim being to protect depositors against failures.
Geraghty also headed the Highway Patrol, assumed responsibility for the state Emergency Unemployment Relief Commission, and wrote the governor’s budget. Immediately upon his appointment, job seekers, representatives of businesses, and politicians hounded him. A busy man, he was not easily found:
Those who did find him saw a sparely built, erect man, with a lean Irish face, topped by a thatch of hair that has been black and is graying now. They found a man sparing with his words, and those words soft spoken, but with definite ideas of government gained in a lifetime of public affairs.
Geraghty’s economy of words and dislike for the limelight are proverbial. He has long been an important factor in Democratic state affairs.
Why would an active partisan, within a few months of assuming one of the state’s most important administrative offices, accept appointment to the rather cloistered, apolitical supreme court? The answer lies in the issues then facing the bench. The governor’s state budget was to be balanced on a proposed increase in the business and occupation taxes, while an income tax imposed on voters by means of the initiative process was to finance public schools. Both tax provisions were before the supreme court. The court had split 4-4 on both issues with Judge Emmett Parker unable to hear the cases because of illness. He announced his retirement, giving Governor Martin an opportunity to determine the outcome of an important case by appointing Parker’s replacement. He chose Jimmy Geraghty.
Despite the rather obvious political reason behind the governor’s choice, Martill urged his close friend to “call them as you see them” and added that the appointment was “without any strings attached.” Geraghty responded to the governor during his swearing-in ceremony: “I am glad you said that. If I didn’t know you felt that way I wouldn’t have accepted this appointment.”
The court scheduled a new hearing for the cases, and three weeks after his appointment Geraghty broke the deadlock by validating the B & O tax. Unfortunately, from the perspective of the governor, Geraghty proved unable to carry a majority of his colleagues in the income tax case and wrote a dissent along with three other justices.
Geraghty’s announcement to seek election to the Parker position in 1934 surprised many observers. They thought with the tax cases out of the way the judge would prefer to return to active politics. Geraghty explained his choice to seek election to a full six-year term:
I have always been interested in politics, but have never been a politician. By that I mean that I have strived to regard and use politics as a necessary tool to promote the rights and interests of the community, not for any selfish objective. The ideal judge should be absolutely divorced from any personal prejudices or partisanship with the welfare of human beings his foremost objective and consideration, in keeping with the constitution and the law.
He survived the primary against three opponents by a margin of 111 votes over his closest rival and defeated his opponent in November by more than 40,000 votes.
Although Judge Geraghty adhered to moderate-liberal Democratic political attitudes, he proved reluctant to intervene judicially in issues he thought need not be resolved. In one of his last opinions he gave expression to this reluctance:
The record is voluminous, and the briefs deal exhaustively with questions not now before us for decision. If we were to follow the arguments of counsel to a conclusion, the results would be to prejudgment of the issues in any action brought by the administrator to recover the stock. This, we should not do.
A painstaking examination of the record satisfies us that the trial court did not abuse its discretion…. Having reached this conclusion, we do not wish to embarrass a further hearing on the merits by the expression of an opinion as to the ultimate facts.
John Rupp, one of the first law clerks with the Washington Supreme Court, recalled Judge Geraghty’s characteristic personality and working habits:
Judge Geraghty was an interesting man … Much of his adult life before he came on the Court in 1933 had been spent as Corporation Counsel of the City of Spokane. He used to tell me tales beginning with, “When I was running the City of Spokane …” I asked my father [Otto Rupp] about that, and Dad assured me that it was not mere rhetoric and that Judge Geraghty had indeed run the city. My father started practicing law in this State in 1903, and he knew “Jimmy Geraghty” very well. Dad also told me that it was not good form to remind Judge Geraghty that he had once driven a brewery wagon.
Judge Geraghty was a well-read man. One day in conversation he learned that I had not read Albert J. Beveridge’s “Life of John Marshall.” He lectured me about that deficiency with such vehemence that I read it promptly…
Judge Geraghty used to roust me out of the library and take me to his chambers to discuss the cases on which he was working. He would sit me down and then pace around the room, talking all the while and punctuating his remarks with sweeping gestures with his cigar. At first I thought that I was supposed to contribute to the discussion, and, since I read all the briefs, I knew a little about each case. So I would chip in with helpful remarks. Soon, however, I realized that that was not my role at all. I was a sounding board. He had reached a point in the decision making process where he needed to express his thoughts orally and aloud. I confined my remarks, then, to appreciative murmurs. After a while he would say, “Thank you very much, Mr. Rupp, you have been a great help to me.” So I would thank him, in turn, and leave. I suppose that I was a help, at that, but not because of any ideas that I contributed.
Geraghty’s mastery of municipal law manifested itself in his last opinion, filed three days before his death. The case resolved the issue of whether a particular Spokane ordinance was subject to a citizens’ referendum. Spokane argued that either the ordinance was susceptible to a voters’ repeal or it was null and void. Judge Geraghty agreed. Either let the voters decide or the ordinance was invalid. His brethren on the high bench showed their respect for his scholarship with a rare display of unanimity in the en banc case. The opinion ended with two simple words: “ALL CONCUR.” Geraghty began his political career supporting the causes of the City of Spokane and ended his judicial career still in support of his city.
Judge Geraghty’s judicial stance did not coincide with his political image. Although he served as Governor Martin’s leading advisor in fashioning and implementing New Deal Democratic policies at the state level, and the governor appointed him largely because he hoped Geraghty would take a liberal approach, students of the court classified him as neutral on the activist-restraintist issue and moderate on legal matters.
A recurring kidney disease sidelined the judge in December 1939, and in the spring of 1940 he was hospitalized. On April 29, 1940, Judge Geraghty passed away, mourned by hundreds in the legal fraternity and political world.
In November 1908, Geraghty married Nora Toolen, a native of Indiana. They had nine children: Thomas, Nora, Helen, Anna, James, John, Patrick, Cecil, and Sheila. They belonged to the Catholic Church and the judge actively supported Catholic affairs both in Spokane and Olympia.
Selected References
Lloyd Spencer and Lancaster Pollard, A History of the State of Washington, vol. 4 (1937), p. 660; Charles Sheldon, A Century of Judging: A Political History of the Washington Supreme Court (1988), pp. 95-96, 110-111, 203, 237, 268-277; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 16 Aug. 1922; Spokane Spokesman-Review, 15 Aug. 1933.
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.
