Born: Tuesday, November 7th, 1905
Died: Tuesday, March 23rd, 1976
Birthplace: Marion, North Carolina
Religion: Methodist
Education: Duke University, B.A. (1930)
Duke University, LL.B. (1934)
Georgetown University, LL.M. (1936)
Career: Federal Housing Administration (1934-1935)
Federal Alcohol Control Administration (1935-1937)
U.S. Department of Justice (1937-1940)
Office of Price Administration (1942-1945)
Served: Monday, January 8th, 1951 to Tuesday, March 23rd, 1976
Chief Justice: Monday, January 9th, 1961 to Monday, January 14th, 1963; Monday, January 9th, 1967 to Monday, January 13th, 1969
Robert Corpening Finley was a man shaped by complex experiences. He once wrote, “Life is change -often lively and sometimes dramatic. It is not in complacency, but in the courage to grow, that we find the answers to the problems of life and living … And law is life, in all its kaleidoscopic multi-dimensional realities.” Finley’s life experiences shaped his view of the law.Finley was born on November 7, 1905 in fairly secure circumstances in Marion, North Carolina. His parents, Robert Sylvester and Willie Grace (Corpening) Finley, owned a drug store in Asheville, a city in the Blue Ridge Mountains of eastern North Carolina, where Robert grew up. He attended public schools in Asheville, graduated from high school in 1923, and enrolled at Trinity College (now Duke University) in Durham, North Carolina. While there he participated in a number of undergraduate activities. He was leader of the college orchestra, played on the varsity football squad, and joined a fraternity. His academic interests were economics and English, but playing the saxophone and clarinet with an orchestra and student dance band gave him the most satisfaction.
Finley left Trinity before completing his studies to play with such big name dance bands as those led by Bunny Berrigan, Tom Truesdale, and Hal Kemp. Later he formed his own band. Although fairly successful, the hand-to-mouth existence of jazz musicians, the drudgery of one-night stands, and an injury to his hand convinced Finley that opportunities for a more satisfying and stable career lay elsewhere. He returned to Durham and Duke University to complete his undergraduate studies and, in 1932, enrolled in the university’s law school.
It is not clear why law attracted him, but the future judge thrust himself into legal studies with enthusiasm. His peers recognized his leadership qualities and elected Finley president of the student bar association, where he made the study of professional ethics his particular interest. In 1934, in the depths of the Great Depression, he received his LL.B. and entered the job market. But, for talented and committed young attorneys, Washington, D. C. and President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal provided an opportunity to participate in a great experiment. Finley’s restless nature, already evidenced by years on the road with big bands, led him from one federal agency to another.
Finley first joined the Federal Housing Administration. In 1935, he became an examiner with the Federal Alcohol Administration. While working for the administration, he completed studies for his master of laws degree at Georgetown University. Attracted to the idea of working with those caught up in the criminal justice system because of economic circumstances, Finley left the nation’s capital in 1937 to work as a probation officer with the federal Bureau of Prisons in North Carolina. After a short time he became discouraged; his efforts at rehabilitation seemed not to work. Within a year he returned to Washington, D.C., as an attorney with the claims division of the Department of Justice.
An article Finley wrote for the Georgetown Law Review impressed Washington’s Attorney General Smith Troy, who invited the future judge to the state to work with him. Finley had married Olympia native Werdna Phillips in 1937 while working for the alcohol administration, and the idea of relocating in the West attracted them. He accepted Troy’s offer. Finley’s assistant attorney general’s roles found him working with the highways, social security, and education departments in Seattle, and later with the state unit of the Office of Price Administration (OPA). In 1944 Finley returned to the nation’s capital to serve with OPA’s director of food enforcement. But with his wife Werdna and their two children, Pat and Randy, he returned to Seattle in 1945 to embark on a legal career in private practice. Their third child, Sparkle, was born in Seattle in 1947. That same year Robert opened a second office in Renton. But Finley became restless again and, encouraged by some of his clients – many from the labor movement – decided to run for the supreme court. Werdna remembered it as a major decision, but “he felt that the work of the supreme court was what he was most suited for.”
The 1948 campaign proved unique and unfortunate for the relatively unknown Finley. The Seattle and Washington State Bar Associations, for the first time, conducted preferential polls on each of the court races. They intervened in the electoral process to prevent the reelection of Judges William Millard and Joseph Mallery, two of the three incumbents on the ballot. Finley’s race against incumbent John S. Robinson was not part of the bars’ concern and the lawyers apparently felt compelled to support at least one of the incumbents. Consequently, they recorded overwhelming support for Robinson. Had the Millard or Mallery races not drawn the bar associations into the campaigns, Finley might have fared much better. As it was, he survived the September primary, but lost to Robinson by more than 130,000 votes in the November election.
In 1950, Finley filed again for the court against incumbent George B. Simpson. Simpson’s reputation as a conservative jurist led labor to support Finley. But again the bar favored the incumbent. Because only two filed for the position, the winner of the September primary would move to the general election unopposed. Finley had acquired name familiarity from his 1948 campaign, and his organization, with the support of labor and the Grange, remained intact. He campaigned on his extensive experience in the federal government and in general practice. His efforts paid when he won by some 30,000 votes, an unusual accomplishment against an incumbent. On January 8, 1951, Robert C. Finley took his oath of office and began a judicial career that, as Werdna Finley had correctly predicted, “most suited” him.
Judge Finley’s opinions are found in fifty volumes of the Washington Reports spanning over twenty-five years. But it is perhaps not a distortion to suggest that his lasting impact on the court came as much from the manner in which he molded the law as from the content he gave it. His judicial style made him an exceptional judge.
Justice Benjamin Cardozo served as Finley’s role model, and leaders in the realist school of jurisprudence provided him with his norms for decision. He often quoted from Cardozo’s The Nature of the Judicial Process and largely accepted the master’s sage advice:
My analysis of the judicial process comes then to this, and to little more: logic, and history, and custom, and utility, and the accepted standards of right conduct, are the forces which singly or in combination shape the progress of the law. Which of these forces shall dominate in any case, must depend largely upon the comparative importance or value of the social interests that will be thereby promoted or impaired.
According to Cardozo, a judge who openly recognizes the policy implications and personal thrust of his or her decisions assumes a greater burden than those who delude themselves into thinking they are merely discovering the law and applying it. Finley argued that adopting the Cardozo “formula … implies or poses significantly the matter of individual responsibility … If judgment, discretion, or choice there is, then it follows there is responsibility for decision making.” Not surprisingly, law clerks serving the court during Finley’s tenure on the bench, along with appellate attorneys, viewed the judge as one of the most liberal-activist jurists. He was result-oriented and deeply concerned with the public’s interest. Justice Robert Brachtenbach, who admired Finley greatly, recalled that he
was more concerned about what the effect of a case would be on people rather than following what some book said from the past. Bob Finley refused to become entangled in the dry web of ancient rules.
Being result-oriented and activist did not absolve him of accountability. But it was accountability to the community and the public. Social interests provided the judge’s frame of reference. This required that he be attuned to society and assumed that he could discern a single or overriding social interest.
The judge saw a distinct advantage in the collegial feature of appellate courts: “Several heads are (or should be) better than one.” And he regarded it a necessity that there be a give-and-take between and among judges. One of his law clerks remembered that Finley persuasively sought signatures on his draft opinions: he inserted excerpts from opinions of other justices’ prior decisions, hoping to convert them to his view. The judge wrote a considerable number of dissenting and concurring opinions. This practice coincided with his “responsibility” perspective. He expressed his view of dissents in one of his numerous articles on the judging process:
[T]he filing of a dissent is more indicative and [a] more truthful and accurate reporting practice as to what a court decided; hence, more useful to lawyers when members of a court cannot agree unanimously. The filing of an opinion as though a decision is unanimous, when in fact it is not, is to my mind actually a questionable practice.
Finley’s first written opinion, in 1951, was a dissent in Senior Citizens’ League v. Department of Social Security. He dissented in part and concurred in part, agreeing with the majority that an answer should be provided to whether the law conflicted with the constitution, but disagreeing on how the majority answered. The court should always deal with “questions of large public importance,” he claimed, and believed that the voice of the judges “might very well be of some considerable importance and perhaps of some assistance.” But he “strongly disagree[d] with the majority view respecting the constitutionality of the delegation of legislative power.” Thus, his concern for policy issues meshed with his idea of responsibility: when judges are compelled to answer issues of public interest they should confront them directly; and when they disagree they should record their reasons. To do otherwise is to avoid responsibility.
Two characteristics marked Finley’s tenure on the supreme court: one, his keen interest in and commitment to the appellate process; the other, his restless nature. Finley, extremely concerned with the courts bogging down in excessive litigation, archaic practices, and unresponsive rules, became one of the first jurists to address the problems of judicial administration. He devoted considerable time and effort – through speeches, articles, seminars, and conferences – to streamlining court business procedures, and in the process developed a national reputation for judicial reform. This reputation encouraged him to pursue another elusive goal: appointment to the U. S. Supreme Court.
In 1963, after Finley had served on the bench for nearly a dozen years, rumors circulated that Justice William O. Douglas contemplated retirement after nearly twenty-five years on the nation’s highest court. The supreme court traditionally had a Westerner, and replacing one Washingtonian with another made some political sense. A letter-writing campaign, directed at Attorney General Robert Kennedy and key members of the senate, urged Finley’s consideration. But Justice Douglas remained, ultimately to serve more than a third of a century on the U. S. Supreme Court.
When Justice Tom Clark of Texas retired in 1967, Washington’s congressional delegation, especially Senators Henry Jackson and Warren Magnuson, brought Finley’s name to the president’s attention as a possible replacement. Finley also called for support from his many admirers among other state courts and advocates for judicial reform. However, Finley apparently was never given serious consideration, and the appointment went to Thurgood Marshall.
One more opportunity for high-court appointment tempted Finley. Justice Abe Fortas, criticized for questionable financial and philanthropic associations, resigned from the supreme court in 1969. Republican President Richard Nixon was not likely to appoint a Democrat to the court. But White House Counsel John Ehrlichman knew Finley well and regarded him as highly qualified. The judge, realizing his chances were slim, thought it well worth the effort trying for the appointment:
This is probably the last time around for me: however, by reason of some things that are cooking, I do feel that the chances are somewhat better this time for some attention and consideration at the White House.
The appointment never came, but Finley consoled himself by remarking that “just the fact of being recommended and supported … prompts a good feeling of well-being and gratitude on my part.”
Despite his disappointment at being passed over for the U. S. Supreme Court, Finley could be proud of his and his colleagues’ accomplishments. His concern for judicial administration helped encourage Washington to institute a Court Administrator’s Office; pass a constitutional amendment allowing pro tempore judges to sit on the court to substitute for disqualified or absent justices; adopt guidelines to allow press and media coverage of trials without threatening fair process; institute an intermediate court of appeals system; and establish a court commissioner for the high bench.
Justice Finley’s off-bench activities reflected his restless nature. Red Kelly’s Tumwater Conservatory in Olympia, a popular food and drink establishment known for its sophisticated jazz, was his home away from home, where he frequently participated in jam sessions. In his later years he added pottery and painting to his already considerable carpentry skills. Fishing and calling square dances competed for the few moments remaining from court work, hobbies, and professional activities.
Finley also cherished family life. Werdna Finley recalled that their children Pat, Randy, and Sparkle were
individuals right from the start. If they showed special interest in anything, we did everything we could to encourage it and to help them explore the subject. They were … terribly interesting people from the beginning.
Pat became a successful Broadway musical actress, television entertainer, and Seattle TV talk-show hostess. Randy was president of Seven Gables Theaters in Seattle. Sparkle became a New York director and producer.
On the morning of March 24, 1976, Tumwater police received a call from Finley’s office: the justice had not arrived at work and could not be reached by phone; would they drop by his home? The police found him dead in bed. He had passed away quietly that night, at the age of seventy. With nearly 400 of his close friends and colleagues he had recently celebrated his twenty-five years on the state’s high bench.
Justice Robert C. Finley believed judge-made law is “a reality of life.” Judges are involved in “weighing of social values in light of human experiences.” Justices have an obligation to “honestly and fully set forth for the public” their views on the law. Justice Finley’s views of life and the law inextricably colored his judicial decisions.
Selected References
Seattle Times, 1Aug. 1976; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 25 Je. 1969 and 28 Jan. 1979; memorial services, Washington Reports, vol. 86, 2d (1976), pp. xxvi-xxxi; The Olympian, 15 Feb. 1976; C. W. Taylor, Eminent Judges and Lawyers of the Northwest (1954), p. 56; Melanie Males, “And Hopes He has done Justice: Robert C. Finley of the Washington Supreme Court,” typescript, Finley file, supreme court collection, Washington State Archives; Finley papers, Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections, Washington State University Library.
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.
