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Biography Born June 8, 1917 in Fort Collins, Colorado. Byron White won fame as both a speedy running back at the University of Colorado, where he was the star football player, and earned a degree in 1938, but also as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. During WWII White served as an intelligence officer with the U.S. Navy, stationed in the Pacific Theater. He wrote the intelligence report on the sinking of John F. Kennedy's PT-109. After the war he served as a law clerk to Chief Justice Frederick M. Vinson. He later returned to Denver, Colorado and practiced law for a number of years. During the 1960 Presidential campaign, White put his football celebrity to use as chair of John. F. Kennedy's campaign in Colorado. During the Kennedy administration White served as Deputy Attorney General. In 1962 he was appointed by Kennedy to succeed Justice Charles Evan Whittaker, who had taken ill. During his service on the High Court, White wrote 994 opinions. His votes and opinions on the bench reflect an ideology that has been notoriously difficult for popular journalists and legal scholars alike to pin down. White often took a narrow, fast-specific view of cases before the Court, and, in the tradition of the New Deal, frequently supported a broad view of governmental powers. He consistently voted against creating constitutional restrictions on the police, dissenting in the landmark 1966 case of Miranda v Arizona. White disliked the politics of Supreme Court appointments. At the end of his service on the Supreme Court, he was the only Democrat on the bench. While he agreed with conservatives on many judicial issues, he remained loyal to the Deomcratic Party and wanted a democrat to name his successor. Therefore, he retired in 1993, under Bill Clinton's Presidency. Clinton appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg to succeed him. Byron White died in Denver, Colorado on April 15, 2002 from complications of pneumonia. He was 84 years old.
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