Eugene Nickerson
Encyclopedia
Eugene Hoffman Nickerson (August 2, 1918 in Orange, New Jersey
– January 1, 2002 in New York City
) was the Democratic
county executive of Nassau County, New York
from 1962 until 1970. Nickerson was the only Democrat to be elected county executive in Nassau County until 2001. Later, as a federal district court judge
, he presided over a challenge to the Pentagon’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuality and the notorious Abner Louima
police brutality case in New York.
A descendant of President John Quincy Adams
, he entered public life as a patrician liberal politician, but later developed a reputation as a steely, independent-minded judge with little patience for lawyers' antics.
stock, and was a descendant both of the Nickerson family of Cape Cod and of President John Quincy Adams. At St. Mark's School
in Southborough, Massachusetts
, he was quarterback of the football team and captain of the hockey team. But shortly before he entered Harvard College
in 1937, Mr. Nickerson was stricken by polio, seemingly ending what had started out to be a promising athletic career. For two years, he was forced to wear his right arm in a brace held out from his body. While at Harvard, Mr. Nickerson showed unusual perseverance by teaching himself to play squash with his left hand. Ultimately he was named the squash team's captain and its ranking player. Harvard's athletic director, William Bingham, wrote to another Harvard graduate, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
, about the courage of this young squash player. Soon Mr. Nickerson received a letter from the president in which Roosevelt discussed the disabilities they both shared. Mr. Nickerson kept that letter for the rest of his life. In 1943 he graduated from Columbia University Law School, where he was an editor of the law review.
law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hope, Hadley & McCloy
, then Hale, Stimson, Russell & Nickerson. Entering politics, he became the first Democrat to win a countywide seat in Nassau since 1912, when regular Republicans and the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party split the Republican vote. In his three three-year terms as county executive, Judge Nickerson took a more liberal approach than his Republican predecessors, often working to expand social services for the needy in what was then one of the nation's fastest-growing counties. He was an early advocate of environmental protection, expanded Nassau County's park system, recruited college graduates for the police force, and favored progressive zoning regulations to open up housing opportunities to minorities and the poor.
He later described his years in the post as reorienting government to concern itself with human beings and their problems. Pressed by Robert F. Kennedy, who recognized Mr. Nickerson's considerable political talents, he ran for the United States Senate in 1968 but lost in the Democratic primary.
The patrician Mr. Nickerson was occasionally seen as an unusual member of the Democratic Party
. Referring to the man who was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, Mr. Nickerson once explained, Adlai Stevenson turned me into a Democrat. I was active in his first campaign, and I stayed active. He brought in other people like myself who had intense interests about government, of ideals and principles.
nominated Judge Nickerson to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York
. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 20, 1977. According to legal scholars, he showed law-and-order sternness when handling criminal cases while often exhibiting a liberal impulse in civil cases.
In 24 years on the federal bench at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York
in Brooklyn
, Judge Nickerson presided over a 1987 trial in which John Gotti
, head of the Gambino Mafia family, was acquitted. In 1986 he dismissed claims by another Mafiaso, Vincent Gigante
, that he was not mentally competent – a ruling that led eventually to Mr. Gigante’s conviction. In a 1983 ruling he abandoned Supreme Court precedent and barred prosecutors from using their peremptory challenges to oust jurors solely on the basis of race. His reasoning ultimately helped persuade the Supreme Court to stop allowing jurors to be removed on the basis of race.
In 1990, he castigated New York public school officials when he learned that they had dragged their feet for years in establishing an adequate education program for the city's 116,000 handicapped schoolchildren. In a hotly contested case, in 1995 he struck down the Pentagon's don't ask, don't tell policy. Calling the policy a violation of free speech, Judge Nickerson wrote, Hitler taught the world what could happen when the government began to target people not for what they had done but because of their status. A year later, a three-judge federal appeals panel in New York sent the case back to him, directing him to assess the constitutionality of the Pentagon's ban on homosexual activity.
In 1997, he again struck down the Pentagon's policy, but this time on the ground of equal protection. Rejecting the military's argument that prohibiting homosexual conduct was needed to maintain unit cohesion
, he wrote, It is hard to imagine why the mere holding of hands off base and in private is dangerous to the mission of the armed forces if done by a homosexual but not if done by a heterosexual. Showing his civil libertarian bent, he added, It is not within our constitutional tradition for our government to designate members of one societal group as pariahs. But the following year a three-judge appeals court overruled Judge Nickerson and upheld the military's ban on homosexual activity and don't ask, don't tell policy. Saying that courts are ill suited to second-guess military judgments, the appellate panel ruled that the Pentagon's policy did not violate constitutional rights because of the special circumstances of the military.
nominated Nickerson to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
to replace Judge Murray Gurfein
, who had died in 1979. However, given that the nomination occurred after the unofficial Thurmond Rule
governing judicial nominations during presidential election years, the Senate never took up Nickerson's nomination. President Ronald Reagan
chose instead to nominate Lawrence W. Pierce
to the seat in September 1981. Pierce was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November 1981.
Orange, New Jersey
The City of Orange is a city and township in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township population was 30,134...
– January 1, 2002 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
) was the Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
county executive of Nassau County, New York
Nassau County, New York
Nassau County is a suburban county on Long Island, east of New York City in the U.S. state of New York, within the New York Metropolitan Area. As of the 2010 census, the population was 1,339,532...
from 1962 until 1970. Nickerson was the only Democrat to be elected county executive in Nassau County until 2001. Later, as a federal district court judge
United States district court
The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...
, he presided over a challenge to the Pentagon’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuality and the notorious Abner Louima
Abner Louima
Abner Louima is a Haitian who was assaulted, brutalized and forcibly sodomized with the handle of a bathroom plunger by New York City police officers after being arrested outside a Brooklyn nightclub in 1997....
police brutality case in New York.
A descendant of President John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams was the sixth President of the United States . He served as an American diplomat, Senator, and Congressional representative. He was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, National Republican, and later Anti-Masonic and Whig parties. Adams was the son of former...
, he entered public life as a patrician liberal politician, but later developed a reputation as a steely, independent-minded judge with little patience for lawyers' antics.
Early life and education
Judge Nickerson came from patrician YankeeYankee
The term Yankee has several interrelated and often pejorative meanings, usually referring to people originating in the northeastern United States, or still more narrowly New England, where application of the term is largely restricted to descendants of the English settlers of the region.The...
stock, and was a descendant both of the Nickerson family of Cape Cod and of President John Quincy Adams. At St. Mark's School
St. Mark's School (Massachusetts)
St. Mark’s School is a coeducational, Episcopal, preparatory school, situated on in Southborough, Massachusetts, from Boston. It was founded in 1865 as an all-boys' school by Joseph Burnett, a wealthy native of Southborough who developed and marketed the world-famous Burnett Vanilla Extract . ...
in Southborough, Massachusetts
Southborough, Massachusetts
Southborough is an affluent town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. It incorporates the smaller villages of Cordaville, Fayville, and Southville. Its name is often informally shortened to Southboro, a usage seen on many area signs and maps. Its population was 9,767 at the 2010...
, he was quarterback of the football team and captain of the hockey team. But shortly before he entered Harvard College
Harvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
in 1937, Mr. Nickerson was stricken by polio, seemingly ending what had started out to be a promising athletic career. For two years, he was forced to wear his right arm in a brace held out from his body. While at Harvard, Mr. Nickerson showed unusual perseverance by teaching himself to play squash with his left hand. Ultimately he was named the squash team's captain and its ranking player. Harvard's athletic director, William Bingham, wrote to another Harvard graduate, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
, about the courage of this young squash player. Soon Mr. Nickerson received a letter from the president in which Roosevelt discussed the disabilities they both shared. Mr. Nickerson kept that letter for the rest of his life. In 1943 he graduated from Columbia University Law School, where he was an editor of the law review.
Professional career and government service
He worked for Wall StreetWall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hope, Hadley & McCloy
Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy
Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP is a United States law firm headquartered in New York City. It also has offices in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, London, Frankfurt, Munich, Tokyo, Hong Kong, São Paulo, Singapore and Beijing.Milbank is a global law firm, with approximately 550 lawyers who...
, then Hale, Stimson, Russell & Nickerson. Entering politics, he became the first Democrat to win a countywide seat in Nassau since 1912, when regular Republicans and the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party split the Republican vote. In his three three-year terms as county executive, Judge Nickerson took a more liberal approach than his Republican predecessors, often working to expand social services for the needy in what was then one of the nation's fastest-growing counties. He was an early advocate of environmental protection, expanded Nassau County's park system, recruited college graduates for the police force, and favored progressive zoning regulations to open up housing opportunities to minorities and the poor.
He later described his years in the post as reorienting government to concern itself with human beings and their problems. Pressed by Robert F. Kennedy, who recognized Mr. Nickerson's considerable political talents, he ran for the United States Senate in 1968 but lost in the Democratic primary.
The patrician Mr. Nickerson was occasionally seen as an unusual member of the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
. Referring to the man who was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, Mr. Nickerson once explained, Adlai Stevenson turned me into a Democrat. I was active in his first campaign, and I stayed active. He brought in other people like myself who had intense interests about government, of ideals and principles.
Federal judicial service
On August 16, 1977, President Jimmy CarterJimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
nominated Judge Nickerson to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York
United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York
The United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York is the federal district court whose jurisdiction comprises the entirety of Long Island and Staten Island...
. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 20, 1977. According to legal scholars, he showed law-and-order sternness when handling criminal cases while often exhibiting a liberal impulse in civil cases.
In 24 years on the federal bench at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York
United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York
The United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York is the federal district court whose jurisdiction comprises the entirety of Long Island and Staten Island...
in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, Judge Nickerson presided over a 1987 trial in which John Gotti
John Gotti
John Joseph Gotti, Jr was an American mobster who became the Boss of the Gambino crime family in New York City. Gotti grew up in poverty. He and his brothers turned to a life of crime at an early age...
, head of the Gambino Mafia family, was acquitted. In 1986 he dismissed claims by another Mafiaso, Vincent Gigante
Vincent Gigante
Vincent Gigante was a short lived professional light heavyweight boxer who was known as "The Chin" Gigante. He fought 25 matches and lost four, boxing 121 rounds. On February 19, 1945, he fought Pete Petrello in Madison Square Garden and won by a knock out in the second round. During his successful...
, that he was not mentally competent – a ruling that led eventually to Mr. Gigante’s conviction. In a 1983 ruling he abandoned Supreme Court precedent and barred prosecutors from using their peremptory challenges to oust jurors solely on the basis of race. His reasoning ultimately helped persuade the Supreme Court to stop allowing jurors to be removed on the basis of race.
In 1990, he castigated New York public school officials when he learned that they had dragged their feet for years in establishing an adequate education program for the city's 116,000 handicapped schoolchildren. In a hotly contested case, in 1995 he struck down the Pentagon's don't ask, don't tell policy. Calling the policy a violation of free speech, Judge Nickerson wrote, Hitler taught the world what could happen when the government began to target people not for what they had done but because of their status. A year later, a three-judge federal appeals panel in New York sent the case back to him, directing him to assess the constitutionality of the Pentagon's ban on homosexual activity.
In 1997, he again struck down the Pentagon's policy, but this time on the ground of equal protection. Rejecting the military's argument that prohibiting homosexual conduct was needed to maintain unit cohesion
Unit cohesion
Unit cohesion is a military concept, defined by one former United States Chief of staff in the early 1980s as "the bonding together of soldiers in such a way as to sustain their will and commitment to each other, the unit, and mission accomplishment, despite combat or mission stress"...
, he wrote, It is hard to imagine why the mere holding of hands off base and in private is dangerous to the mission of the armed forces if done by a homosexual but not if done by a heterosexual. Showing his civil libertarian bent, he added, It is not within our constitutional tradition for our government to designate members of one societal group as pariahs. But the following year a three-judge appeals court overruled Judge Nickerson and upheld the military's ban on homosexual activity and don't ask, don't tell policy. Saying that courts are ill suited to second-guess military judgments, the appellate panel ruled that the Pentagon's policy did not violate constitutional rights because of the special circumstances of the military.
Failed nomination to the Second Circuit
On August 26, 1980, President Jimmy CarterJimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
nominated Nickerson to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...
to replace Judge Murray Gurfein
Murray Gurfein
Murray Irwin Gurfein was a federal judge in the United States.Born in New York City, Gurfein attended Columbia College and Harvard Law School. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Julian Mack and then as an Assistant United States Attorney in New York. He also served as an...
, who had died in 1979. However, given that the nomination occurred after the unofficial Thurmond Rule
Thurmond Rule
The Thurmond Rule is an informal and somewhat amorphous rule of thumb in the United States Senate. While it originated with former Senator Strom Thurmond's opposition to President Lyndon Johnson's nomination of Justice Abe Fortas to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in June of 1968, its...
governing judicial nominations during presidential election years, the Senate never took up Nickerson's nomination. President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
chose instead to nominate Lawrence W. Pierce
Lawrence W. Pierce
Judge Lawrence Pierce is an American lawyer who served for 24 years as a federal judge.A native of Philadelphia, Pierce attended St. Joseph's University and Fordham Law School. As a lawyer, Pierce worked as a public defender in New York City and then served as an assistant district attorney in...
to the seat in September 1981. Pierce was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November 1981.