Born: Tuesday, November 10th, 1914
Died: Sunday, March 20th, 1994
Birthplace: Prosser, Washington
Religion: Presbyterian
Education: American University, LL.B. (1940)
Career: Assistant Attorney General (1940-1941)
Prosecuting Attorney (1946-1948)
Superior Court (1948-1961)
Served: Monday, January 22nd, 1962 to Monday, January 8th, 1979
Chief Justice: Monday, January 11th, 1971 to Monday, January 8th, 1973
Political Party: Democrat
Appointing Governor: Rosellini (Democrat)
Richard W. Gay, publisher of the Prosser Record-Bulletin and longtime friend of Orris Hamilton, remembered the judge during his days in Prosser:He was known as an extremely hard worker. It was common to see lights on [in] his corner office on the top floor of the darkened courthouse late at night. He was there boning up on the law regarding cases before him. I don t think many people felt he started his career with an over-abundance of talent. But he grew in knowledge and ability and ultimately became highly respected. When [Governor] Al Rosellini appointed him, the Republicans scoffed and I heard one Democrat (who wanted the job) say the appointment was a joke. His hometown is very proud of him.
After a review of his public life, this impression prevails: Orris worked hard at meeting if not surpassing the demands of the particular office he held.
The future judge was born on November 10, 1914 in Prosser, where the family had been prominent in Democratic politics. His father, Garrison Wire Hamilton, served as Washington Attorney General from 1933 to 1940. The elder Hamilton’s marriage to Nellie J. Lundquist was his second, and Orris was the only child from that union, although he had one step-brother and two step-sisters. Orris attended public schools in Prosser, graduating from high school there in 1934 after one year in Olympia.
Hamilton’s interest in law began when he clerked for his father in Olympia in 1933. The combination of talking politics and law with his father and the political environment in Olympia convinced him to attend law school. An opportunity to work in Washington, D.C., with the Department of Fisheries beckoned. Hamilton welcomed the exciting opportunity to observe New Deal politics firsthand while gaining a legal education. He worked full-time with fisheries (and later with the Bureau of the Census and the Securities and Exchange Commission) during the day and attended night classes at American University’s Washington College of Law. Graduating with an LL.B. in 1940, he promptly gained admittance to the District of Columbia and Washington bars. Upon the death of his father, Orris returned to Olympia to work as an assistant attorney general with his father’s successor, Smith Troy. In 1942 he became associated with the Seattle law firm of Falknor, Emory, and Howe.
After a few months with the Seattle firm, Hamilton joined the army during World War II and attended officer candidates’ school, successfully completing the rigorous ninety-day program. After further infantry training the army shipped him to Europe, assigning him to the Forty-fourth Infantry Division where he soon engaged in fighting. Lieutenant Hamilton received a Bronze Star for bravery in one of his many encounters with the enemy. In France, German bunker fire pinned down his unit. Without regard for personal safety, he moved to an exposed observation post and directed artillery fire on the German position. The bunker was taken and the area secured. The military honorably discharged him as an infantry captain in 1946.
Upon his return to Prosser, Hamilton first set up his own office and then formed a law partnership with Maloy Sensney. He became active in a number of community groups and in Democratic politics, winning election as Benton County Prosecutor in 1946. When a vacancy occurred on the superior court bench for Benton, Adams, and Franklin counties in 1948, Governor Mon C. Wallgren appointed Hamilton, making him, at age thirty-four, the youngest judge then serving in Washington. The appointment followed a rather bizarre set of circumstances, and to Hamilton, it “came rather surprisingly.” With Wallgren out of the state, Lieutenant Governor Vic Meyers, temporarily assuming the reins of state government, appointed someone from the west side to the new post. But Secretary of State Earl Coe refused to certify the appointment. The governor hurried back, persuaded the appointee to withdraw, and then turned to Hamilton. Although he had been number three on the bar’s list, he was the only Democrat, which, of course, made the difference.
As a trial judge, Hamilton proved to be a “stickler” on the rights of the accused even before the U. S. Supreme Court forced such protections upon states. He was especially concerned with guilty pleas. If “he had doubts about” a plea, “he would not accept” it. The judge was always ready for trial. According to his former assistant prosecutor and law partner, Maloy Sensney:
He was an extremely hard worker. He briefed every case himself before the trial began. This was very unusual for [a] judge … [O]ften times Orris knew more about the case law relevant in a particular case than either of the lawyers involved. He worked long hours to stay abreast of the work load he forced upon himself. .. He was obsessed with the idea that he had to be prepared for each case.
Often he met with Sensney after both had worked late into the night to share light conversation over a cup of coffee at Ford’s Grill. Then the judge would return to “his office and maybe work until two or three in the morning,” even though a hearing might be scheduled for nine the next morning.
In 1957 Justice Edgar Schwellenbach, originally from eastern Washington, passed away, allowing Democratic Governor Albert Rosellini to make his first high bench appointment. Hamilton was a serious contender and actively sought the post, but the governor selected Judge Robert Hunter of Ephrata. In 1962, when Justice Joseph Mallery of Tacoma retired, Hamilton expected the appointment to go to someone from the west side of the state. Nevertheless, Hamilton wrote a letter to the governor expressing his interest, checked with the state bar office to make sure his name remained on their approved list, and then went about his business. The governor acted as expected and offered the appointment to Judge Frank Hale of Tacoma. Hale turned down the offer, although he accepted a subsequent appointment, and Rosellini promptly called Orris Hamilton, who quickly accepted. On January 22, 1962 Hamilton became the fifty-eighth judge of the Washington Supreme Court.
In his first electoral defense, Hamilton faced a serious challenge from former Republican State Chairman William C. Goodloe, who would be elected to the court in 1984. With support from Governor Rosellini, Democrats, and the bar, Hamilton defeated Goodloe in the September primary by fewer than 20,000. Nonetheless, his name appeared on the November 1966 general election ballot unopposed, and he won a six-year term. In the 1972 primary he turned back the challenge of Seattle attorney George Faler by more than 200,000 votes.
Throughout his seventeen-year court tenure, most observers regarded Hamilton as a moderate judge, restraintist in the exercise of judicial power. He became slightly more conservative after his first few years on the bench. For example, in his first five years he held with the defendant in criminal cases 56 percent of the time. But in his last five years he supported the appeal of the defendants only 26 percent of the time. In such matters as tax cases, however, he remained consistent throughout his tenure, holding for the government about two-thirds of the time.
Hamilton demanded proper procedures. For example, in Mempa v. Rhay in 1966, the judge dissented from his brethren because they failed to grant the same procedural protections to a parolee as to others. The U. S. Supreme Court later adopted his dissent. In State v. Green in 1979, Hamilton, writing for the court, struck down the state’s death penalty initiative as violating the cruel and unusual punishment provisions of the Bill of Rights as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. After serving as a trial judge for over a dozen years he also understood and appreciated the pressures on the trial bench and consistently supported the discretion exercised by trial judges. The supreme court ought not to “substitute [its] findings … for those of the trial court,” he wrote in a 1962 case.
Hamilton had an individualistic decisional style. He tended to keep his own counsel, write his own opinions, and, although concerned with consensus he rarely lobbied for his position. According to one of his law clerks:
When assigned to write the majority opinion my judge almost always tried to get the results dictated by the conference vote in the simplest, most direct and least controversial way.
As in his earlier days in Prosser, the judge worked alone, long, and hard to polish his decisions. Another clerk referred to this deliberative process:
When assigned to write an opinion, my judge would tell me the result of the conference vote and discuss very generally how he thought the result should be reached. I was to draft an opinion consistent with that result. When the draft was given to him, he did not ask for nor did he want any further discussion between us or any additional effort on my part on that case. He tended to regard his law clerk’s product as but one minor item to be considered in reaching his own conclusions. He independently researched the issues he felt were involved and never asked me to check or verify his research.
Law clerks rarely served as “sounding boards,” and most input they provided took the form of an exchange of draft opinions, memos, or written research papers. Hamilton maintained a somewhat distant relationship with his clerks, largely as a result of his personality and style. He appeared to his law clerks as shy, remote, and somewhat ill-at-ease with them.
On occasion the judge lagged in completing his writing assignments, largely because of his desire to be confident of his arguments. This left little time for writing dissents or concurrences. A former law clerk recalled that the judge “rarely wrote or joined in a dissent or a separate concurring opinion.” If he wrote a dissent, it was “usually very short.”
Hamilton felt compelled to vote or write a dissenting opinion in only about four percent of all cases, about half the court average. Winning more votes and possibly laying a groundwork for future cases prompted the few dissents he penned.
Judge Hamilton availed himself of several general sources for deciding cases. His ranking of these reflected a restraintist and traditional perspective regarding judicial decision-making. First in importance came constitutions; these were followed, in order, by statutes, common sense, precedents, justice, and public interest. During his years on the bench he tended to side with the more restraintist and conservative members, such as Justice Frank Weaver and Charles Wright.
In late February 1978, Justice Hamilton became ill during a court session, requiring a short hospitalization. Although only sixty-three years old, and with apparently unassailable support in any subsequent election drive, he announced retirement. His motives were simple:
The conclusion of my present term as a Justice of the Supreme Court will mark 30 years of direct association with the judicial system of the State of Washington – 13 years as a superior court judge and 17 years as a Supreme Court justice… While it may not be so for others, to me 30 years in the Judicial branch of government marks a milestone which I do not deem desirable to bypass. Accordingly, I have decided to step down at the conclusion of my current term to make room for new blood, so to speak.
In June 1947 Hamilton and Shirley I. Rosenberg of Lewiston, Idaho, had married. They had three children: Deea, Christopher, and Denise. After retiring, Shirley and Orris traveled in their motor home and tended their garden at their Olympia home. He also enjoyed hunting. After 1979 he had, on several occasions, returned to the high court bench as a pro tempore justice.
Throughout Justice Hamilton’s long career he was involved in a number of professional, social, and civic groups. He served as vice president and president of the Superior Court Judges’ Association, was a member of the Institute of Judicial Administration, the National Institute of Crime and Delinquency, and the American Judicature Society, and attended the National Conference of State Trial Judges. He actively participated in Sigma Delta Kappa, Free Masons, Elks, Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion, and Shriners. He helped organize the Benton-Franklin Counties’ Youth Center, went to the Little White House Conference on Children and Youth, and served on the state Child Welfare Advisory Committee.
Selected References
Hamilton’s oral history interview is in the supreme court collection, Washington State Archives. See also John Pierce, “Background as Determinant of Judicial Policies and Decisions: Orris Hamilton,” Hamilton file, same collection; Hamilton papers, Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections, Washington State University Library; and The Olympian, 22 Je. 1979.
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.
