Born: Sunday, September 12th, 1920
Died: Sunday, October 19th, 1980
Birthplace: Portland, Oregon
Religion: Episcopalian
Education: University of Oregon, B.A. (1942)
Northwestern University School of Law, LL.B. (1948)
Career: Beaux Arts Councilman and Mayor (1952-1962)
Superior Court (1967-1970)
Consultant, U.S. Attorney General (1971)
Federal District Court (1971-1980)
Served: Thursday, May 28th, 1970 to Monday, January 11th, 1971
Also Served: Thursday, May 13th, 1971 to Friday, December 17th, 1971
Political Party: Republican
Appointing Governor: Evans (Republican)
Born in Portland, Oregon, Morell E. Sharp attended public schools there and graduated from the University of Oregon in 1942. World War II interrupted his education when the army commissioned him and sent him to the Pacific theater. He served as company commander and later became regimental adjutant. He attained the rank of captain.After the war Sharp enrolled at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, receiving his LL.B. in 1948. While in law school he belonged to Phi Delta Phi and was president of the student bar association, as well as a member of its board of governors. Following graduation he became counsel for the Milwaukee Railroad in Illinois. After two years in Illinois, the company assigned him to Seattle. In 1956 he left the railroad and went into private practice with the firm of Williams, Kinnear, and Sharp and then with Graham, Dunn, Johnston, and Rosenquist.
Sharp became active in the Republican party soon after moving to Seattle. He served as councilman and mayor of Beaux Arts, a small town east of Seattle, and presided over the Young Republicans of King County. In that capacity he met Daniel Evans, who would later be instrumental in Sharp’s appointments to both the state and federal benches. Sharp remembered the first time he met Evans:
[I was] president of the King County Young Republicans. The King County Republican headquarters called me one day. They said they had this young man who had just been discharged from the navy and he was interested in politics and they’re going to send him over [for me] to talk with him. I remember Dan coming into the office and so, obviously, we put him to work immediately.
Although not close personal friends, Sharp and Evans became partisan allies. When King County got a new judgeship in 1967, Governor Evans appointed Morell Sharp. After only a few years on the trial bench, he became chairman of the superior court’s juvenile committee and served on the executive committee of the King County Judges’ Association. He was also a delegate to the National Conference of State Trial Judges, and served with the supreme court’s liaison committee contemplating reforming the judicial article of the state constitution.
When supreme court Justice Frank P. Weaver resigned in 1970, Evans wanted to appoint his administrative assistant, James Dolliver, to the post. However, because of considerable resistance from the state bar association, Evans turned to Morell Sharp to fill the Weaver vacancy. Almost immediately after being sworn in, superior court Judge Charles T. Wright filed against Sharp in the upcoming supreme court election. With but the two on the ballot, the September primary would decide the outcome.
Judge Sharp had the strong backing of the Seattle-King County and Washington State Bar Associations as well as the vast majority of his superior court colleagues. The Republican party organization also helped and Governor Evans endorsed him, but to no avail. Judge Wright prevailed in the primary by more than 12,000 votes. Sharp’s defeat could be attributed to a number of factors. Many, including Sharp, thought the voters confused Judge Charles Wright with popular Judge Eugene Wright, who had been on the King County Superior Court before his appointment to the federal circuit court. Labor and the Grange also worked for Wright. Finally, Judge Wright simply proved a more attractive campaigner. Judge Sharp appeared reluctant to throw himself into a public campaign. In any case, after only a few months on the state’s high bench, Sharp was returned to private life.
Through his acquaintance with White House Counsel John Ehrlichman, Judge Sharp won appointment as special consultant to the U. S. Attorney General’s special committee on the study of crime. He remained in that capacity until another opportunity to return to the appellate bench presented itself. This occurred when Justice Walter McGovern moved up to the federal district bench. Upon receiving the list of bar-approved candidates (which continued to include Sharp) Governor Evans promptly returned him to the supreme court. Sharp took his second oath of office a few days short of four months after having been rejected by the voters and forced to leave. The governor did not apologize for returning the judge to the bench. He said “he had no problems” with the reappointment. He continued to believe Sharp well-qualified. Sharp felt that his defeat to Wright had been due to special factors and did not constitute a rejection by the electorate. He said he “wanted to get back on the bench” and readily accepted the appointment.
Within a short time, a federal bench opening became available, and with Republican Richard Nixon in the White House, Evans recommended Sharp for the appointment. On December 17, 1971, only a year after having lost at the ballot box and a few months after his second appointment, Sharp resigned to take his oath as a federal district judge for western Washington.
Although Justice Sharp had a short tenure on the state supreme court, he left clues about his approach to appellate review. He tended to take a collective approach to decisional matters. Informal discussions worked best for him in explaining his opinions and bringing others over to his view. Comments on the passing sheets and discussions with a justice who in turn might pass comments on to a third judge indicated his collective perspective. Persuasion was his practice. His personal decisional style relied on an interesting balance between common sense and the more tangible legal factors more often associated with a trial judge than a member of a court of last resort. Sharp evaluated the facts of the case based upon his own knowledge of the law and his feeling for what was right. Then he searched for appropriate precedent to confirm his tentative conclusions. These bases for decision prevailed over information found in the attorneys’ briefs or their oral arguments, the views of his brethren on the bench, and the research his law clerks provided.
Sharp believed dissents should be used to “lay the groundwork for the future.” He regarded himself as a moderate concerning policy issues confronting the supreme court.
One of his former law clerks recalled:
If anything characterized the atmosphere in the Judge’s courtroom, it was his sense of humor. We remember fondly the Judge’s warm but pointed wit, his wry smile, and that mischievous twinkle in his eyes; his ability to leaven serious matters with a touch of humor endeared him to us all … [However] working with the Judge was a nonstop seminar in trial conduct and strategy. We learned the value of careful and thoughtful trial preparation.
Two of his most important cases while on the federal bench concerned litigation arising from the construction of the Seattle Kingdome and the trial on racketeering charges against Pierce County Sheriff George Janovich and seven others. The U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the conviction of the defendants in the Pierce County case.
Judge Sharp participated actively in a variety of court reform groups. He was a founding director of the National Center for State Courts, served on the board of editors of the journal of the American Bar Association, was a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a director of the American Judicature Society. His fellow judges in the Ninth Circuit chose him to be their representative at the Judicial Conference of the United States an indication of the esteem in which they held him.
Morell and Betty Sharp were parents of two children, Laurie and John. The family was a central focus of Judge Sharp’s life. Cross-country skiing, Boy Scout trips, canoe expeditions, and camping trips always involved one or another member of the family.
The judge was ill for a considerable time in late 1979 and early 1980. Surgery failed to remove a growth in his brain, and after several months of suffering he passed away on October 19, 1980.
Selected References
Memorial proceedings, Federal Supplement, vol. 499 (1980), pp. Ivii-lxxxviii; Seattle Times, 22 Apr. 1979; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 21 Oct. 1980. Also see Sharp’s oral history interview, supreme court collection, Washington State Archives.
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.
