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vii foreword Stephen Breyer When Bill Coleman tried out for the swim team at his Philadelphia high school, the school eliminated the team rather than risk racial integration.That is the world in which Bill grew up. And that is the world that Bill Coleman helped to change. He did so directly when called upon for help by Thurgood Marshall. And he did so indirectly through the power of example—the example of a man of unusual ability who became successful as a skilled attorney, a wise counselor, and a dedicated public servant. Bill Coleman’s story is one that younger generations should mark and inwardly digest, lest they forget the pioneers who helped to make a better America possible. That story also shows us something important about the legal profession, helping us understand how in the mid-twentieth century an individual could become, at one and the same time, a great lawyer, a wise statesman, and a leader in the fight for equal rights. Coleman started life with enormous natural abilities, including intelligence, perseverance, and the capacity for hard work. After graduating summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, he entered Harvard Law School, where he became a member of the Harvard Law Review. His law school education was interrupted by World War II when he volunteered for service in the Army Air Corps. After the war, he graduated from the law school first in his class, earning the Fay Diploma. He had just begun to serve as a law clerk for Judge Herbert Goodrich of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals when he received a call offering him a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter . Bill accepted. He spent the next year at the Court, learning from Justice Frankfurter about the law, discussing law and literature (including Shakespeare and Pushkin) with his fellow clerk (and later attorney general) Elliot Richardson , and even arguing fine points of constitutional theory with Justice Hugo Black, whose views differed considerably from those of Justice Frankfurter. 00-0488-1 fm.indd 7 9/29/10 1:32 PM viii / Foreword Bill then entered private practice, where he thrived. He enjoyed a variety of assignments. An early one involved addressing an entertainment star’s fear that someone else had received higher billing. Ever practical, Bill simply took a ladder to a Broadway theater at three o’clock on a rainy morning, put it up against the marquee, and measured the height of the letters in Cole Porter’s name. Bill is pragmatic. He once solved a complex legal problem by insisting that his clients, worried about which country’s laws would govern a particular contract, sign the contract over the Pacific in midflight. Bill is highly skilled. He argued nineteen cases in the Supreme Court. Bill is wise. That fact is known to the many young lawyers who have seen him as a mentor as well as to the many clients who have sought advice from him on more than purely legal issues. At the same time, Coleman’s career extends well beyond that of private practitioner. He is one of that breed of (now sadly vanishing) statesmenlawyers whose careers combine private practice with public service. They include William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Henry L. Stimson, Dean Acheson, Lloyd Cutler, and many others who took to heart Roscoe Pound’s admonition that law is a profession “imbued with a spirit of public service.” That public service, in Bill Coleman’s case, included work with the Warren Commission, an appointment as our nation’s secretary of transportation, and membership on numerous local, state, and national public and private advisory boards, commissions, foundations, and similar entities. To each he has devoted his intelligence, energy, and imagination, always looking for workable solutions. I saw him at work firsthand when the government was considering whether to grant landing rights for the Concorde, the British-French airplane that both flew and boomed supersonically. Bill, then transportation secretary, resolved the controversy by presiding personally over lengthy public hearings about landing rights in Washington, D.C., and New York. By opening up the process, by giving everyone a chance to be heard, he helped ensure acceptance of a compromise solution that might otherwise have satisfied no one. Yet to describe Coleman simply as a private lawyer and public servant would be highly misleading. Bill is a man of color who grew up at a time when that fact meant hardship, humiliation, and prejudice at the hands of a society that...

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