Judge Damon J. Keith, a grandson of slaves and a leading figure in the civil rights movement, has died at the age of 96. Keith died in his hometown of Detroit, the city where the prominent lawyer was appointed in 1967 to the U.S. District Court.
Judge Damon J. Keith, a grandson of slaves and a leading figure in the civil rights movement, has died at the age of 96. As a federal judge, Keith was sued byKeith died in his hometown of Detroit, the city where the prominent lawyer was appointed in 1967 to the U.S. District Court.Keith served more than 50 years in the federal courts. Before his death, he still heard cases about four times a year at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
Keith revisited the civil liberties theme roughly 30 years later in an opinion that said President George W. Bush could not conduct secret deportation hearings of terrorism suspects. Keith's opinion contained the line,"Democracies die behind closed doors." Praveen Madhiraju, Keith's former law clerk who worked with him on the 2002 opinion against Bush, was credited with coining the"Democracies die behind closed doors" line, but the attorney, now based in Washington, D.C., said Keith deserved far more credit.
Madhiraju said it helped that Keith would periodically pop into the clerk's office to offer suggestions, such as instructing him to review the Pentagon Papers on U.S. policy toward Vietnam and the words of the late Sen. J. William Fulbright, who said,"In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith."
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