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EMIL
FRANZI |
Browning, a good man in a bad trade
March 5, 2008
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Retired
U.S. District Court Judge William
Browning passed away at age 76 after a
long illness. Arizona and the federal
bench lost a good man.
Bill was born in Tucson, served in the USAF after graduation from the UA, and graduated from its law school in 1960. The three years he spent as a civilian prisoner of the Japanese in the Phillippines during WW2 may have ultimately hastened his demise. He, his brother and mother survived the concentration camp, but his father died on a Hell ship taking him to Japan ironically torpedoed by an American sub. You can read a fictionalized version of that in America’s Best, a novel by his wife Zeke (Sinclair) Browning. The Brownings lived in Catalina until 2003 when they were flooded out, then moving to Sonoita. Bill and I were hardly close. We had a lengthy antagonism that was almost genetic. He was the moderate Republican establishment lawyer. I was the right-wing bomb-thrower. That classic exposition of American sociology, Animal House, illustrates it even better. He was an SAE far closer to the fictional Omegas than my Phi Psis, who may have been the role model for the fictional Deltas. In 1974 we engaged in a major political clash. Bill was president of the State Bar and led the effort for “merit selection of judges,” replacing the elected system with nominating committees that have the governor pick from the short list they submit. I opposed it —vehemently. Part of it was my Andy Jackson strain. Jacksonians installed direct election of judges in many states, but part of it was personal. Bill and I had a severe run-in one night when we’d both had too many. Like the Earps and Clantons, we were both looking for a brawl. We got it, metaphorically. I helped organize the local opposition with attorney Bill Risner, who was about as far from Browning on the left as I was on the right. We tag-teamed a series of debates, and garnered enough media coverage to win in Southern Arizona, but not enough to take the state, although it was close. We won most of those debates, Browning the election. He deserved credit for engaging us in them when he could’ve blown us off. One morning over coffee before a radio appearance, he asked if I knew from my LA political days an old buddy of his who’d run for Congress named Bill McColl. Small world — one of my personal mentors was Congressman John Rousselot, who regained his seat in a special election winning an eight-way GOP primary by under a hundred votes, nosing out … Bill McColl. Our differences were often resolved by close margins. Browning was basically a Hamiltonian, making him more traditionally Republican. His GOP and ABA credentials and reputation as an excellent attorney resulted in his nomination by Sen. Barry Goldwater and appointment by President Ronald Reagan to the bench in 1984. Bill’s judicial demeanor was never pompous nor pretentious, and almost alone among his federal colleagues he never rendered a bizarre opinion. There weren’t any, but there were some good ones. Locally, he pointed out to the legal pygmies in Oro Valley that the First Amendment applied there in tossing out their attempt to muzzle political pariah Joe Sweeney and to harass now state Rep. Nancy Young Wright. Ironically, her lawyer was Bill Risner. Browning spent much of his later years working for the new Federal Courts Building. He liked being a judge and never really retired, remaining on senior status until his final illness. I owed him a couple. Bill Risner and I wouldn’t have become close friends if we hadn’t joined up to oppose him. Judge William Browning ultimately earned my respect. I hope he felt the same. As H. L. Mencken said of President Grover Cleveland, he was a good man in a bad trade.
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BUT WATCH WHAT YOU SAY! |
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