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269 A fter Hughes retired as chief justice, the New Jersey legislature created the Richard J. Hughes Chair in Constitutional and Public Law and Service at Seton Hall University School of Law. Seton Hall was probably chosen for a number of reasons: his son, Michael Murphy, had graduated from the law school; his son, Thomas More Hughes, was a student at the undergraduate school; and Hughes had hired a number of outstanding Seton Hall Law School graduates as clerks. Hughes filled the chair during its first year. He ran a series of lectures featuring several prominent officials from New Jersey, including former governors and administrators. Jane Kelly, who worked with Hughes to prepare the program and who assisted him on an article he wrote for the law review entitled “Reflections: A Growing Court,”1 remembered that the course was very popular with the students.2 In the ensuing years, many prominent jurists and scholars have filled the chair. Hughes, of course, had never been satisfied with doing just one thing at any one time, so upon retirement, he also became “of Counsel” to the firm in Trenton that had been started by Joel Sterns, who had been in Hughes’s administration and was a close friend of the former governor. Other members of the Hughes administration were also partners in the firm. In the years after the governorship, the firm prospered and when Hughes became available, Sterns convinced him to join. Adrian “Bud” Foley, who was Hughes’s partner during the years between the governorship and the Supreme Court, wanted Hughes to rejoin his firm. Sterns and Foley encouraged Hughes to enthusiastically choose one of the firms and be comfortable with the decision. Hughes enjoyed his partnership with Connell and Foley Chapter 19 The Later Years The LIFE and TIMES of R ICHARD J. HUGHES 270 but the Sterns firm was in Trenton and thus much more convenient. Foley and Sterns met and devised a financial package that would be the same for both firms. That made it possible for Hughes to make a decision based on convenience factors.3 He chose the Sterns firm. After he joined, Hughes was asked what it was like to have his former assistant as his boss. Hughes responded, “Not so different as one might imagine. . . . Joel always did think he ran the Governor’s office.”4 During these years Hughes would often be called upon to promote important public projects. Governor Kean, a Republican, asked Hughes to help gather support for a bond issue. Kean chose Hughes because he was “perhaps the most popular Democrat in the state.”5 When the federal government made Martin Luther King Day a national holiday, Governor Kean emphasized its importance by creating a forty-member Commemorative Commission. He chose Hughes as one of its co-chairmen. In describing Kean’s reasons for choosing Hughes, Kean’s biographer, Alvin Felzenberg, said, “Hughes had been Governor at the height of the civil rights struggles and had personally known King. His recollections of his conversations with the civil rights leader in the aftermath of the Newark riots captured the imagination of a generation that came into political consciousness after King’s death.”6 Hughes subsequently had to write to the governor informing him that the legislative appointments to the commission were all Democratic and that the federal statute defining the creation of the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday Commission provided that “not more than half of the members of the Commission appointed . . . shall be members of the same political party.” He urged a revision of the executive order setting up the commission to add an equal number of Republicans, feeling that the commission should be “above politics.” He said, “For my part, despite my notorious fervency as a Democrat, I pledge to greet our 4 Republican legislative members effusively, hopefully at our next commission meeting.”7 Hughes began engaging in other activities as well. Robert O’Brien, the president of Carteret Savings and Loan Association in Newark, invited Hughes to sit on his board of directors and Hughes accepted. O’Brien, highly regarded in the banking industry, had come to know Hughes while he was governor. Their friendship continued after Hughes left the governorship . O’Brien realized that the governor, who had spent so much of his career in public service and had such a large family, was not entirely financially secure. When Hughes was about six months away from mandatory retirement, O’Brien...

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