MSS 98-02

Inventory of the Papers of Judge Pierce Lively

Dates

Creation: 1972-1997

Extent

20 Cubic feet
50 archival boxes

Abstract

Judicial papers (1972-1997), legal and administrative, that document Lively's service on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Acquisition Information

Judge Lively donated his papers to the Law Library in January of 1998.

Arrangement

The Lively papers have been kept in the order in which they were received, and his folder headings have been preserved. The 50 boxes (21 linear feet) of files are organized in these groups:

Selected Case Files, 1972-97, Boxes 1 - 32, including Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education, a book banning case which alleged violation of First Amendment rights to the exercise of religion; Detroit Police Officers' Association v. Young, an affirmative action case; City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, Inc., an abortion case which addressed the state's ability to regulate the abortion procedure; and Demjanjuk v. Petrovsky, the case concerning the deportation to Israel of an alleged Nazi prison guard.

Sixth Circuit Administrative Files, predominantly 1980s, Boxes 32 - 40, organized by the judge into these categories: general administrative, court and council meetings, chief judge -- general, and chief judge -- bankruptcy.

Judicial Conference, Boxes 41-47, arranged in three categories: General, 1976-79; Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, 1987-89; and Advisory Committee on Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, 1979-90.

Correspondence, Speeches, etc. and Miscellany, 1973-97, Boxes 47-49.

Published Materials, 1984-89, Box 50.

Biographical / Historical Note

Pierce Lively was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on 17 August 1921, to Ruby Keating and Henry Thaddeus Lively, a lawyer. He studied at Centre College in Danville, where he graduatedmagna cum laudewith a B.A. in History and English Literature. From 1943 to 1946, he served in the U.S. Navy, and while in the service married his college sweetheart, Amelia Harrington. After the war he studied law at the University of Virginia, where he served on the editorial board of the Law Review and received the honors of membership in the Order of the Coif and the Raven Society.

After graduating in 1948, he returned to Kentucky. He first clerked for U.S. Sixth Circuit Judge Shackelford Miller, Jr., in Louisville, and then settled in Danville, where he practiced law for twenty-two years. In 1958, he formed a partnership with Nelson Rhodes, and together they specialized in litigation, tax law, and business counseling. At one point, Lively sat as a special trial judge of the Boyle Circuit Court during the illness of Judge Kendrick S. Alcorn. Aside from his law practice, Lively served the community in a number of other ways. In 1952, he joined the Board of Trustees of Centre College and was later appointed a trustee for life. During the 1960s and 1970s, he was a member of the biracial Human Relations Council, the Kentucky Commission on Economy and Efficiency in Government, and the Kentucky Judicial Advisory Committee.

On September 12, 1972, he was appointed by President Nixon to the Sixth Circuit and served as chief judge of that court from 1983 to 1988. At the time of his retirement, Lively noted that a number of the cases he had heard were "pacesetting" cases in areas such as abortion rights, affirmative action, desegregation, environmental protection, free speech, and separation of church and state. A former law clerk, J. Kevin Buster, characterized Lively as "an old-fashioned Republican. He's for the little guy, for individual rights, [and] established himself as a fiery defender of civil liberties, using his power to restrain governments and religions from forcing themselves on individuals." In Lively's words: "Some of the worst abuses in human history have been committed by governments in the name of religion. Our Founding Fathers wisely understood this and acted to prevent it, in no uncertain terms, in the Constitution."Lexington Herald-Leader, A12, January 4, 1998.

Judge Lively was a role model for his clerks and staff. In 1989, when his portrait was presented to the Court in Cincinnati, his former law clerk Kay Randall spoke at the ceremony. She concluded her remarks by saying, "Judge Lively continues to demonstrate all of those qualities which so impressed me as a young clerk: integrity, experience, judicial temperament, scholarship, and a love of the law, and also the human qualities of fairness, compassion, and patience. With all of these qualities, the Judge has earned our respect and admiration." 946 F.2d cxxiv.

Judge Lively took senior status in January 1989 and retired from the bench December 31, 1997. He passed away on March 12, 2016, at the age of 94.

Physical Description

This collection contains 50 boxes of files (21 linear feet).1 arbitrary_unit

Preferred Citation

Inventory of the Papers of Judge Pierce Lively, 1972-1997, MSS 98-2, Box Number, Special Collections, University of Virginia Law Library.

Scope and Content

Judge Lively donated his papers to the University of Virginia Law Library in January of 1998. In a letter dated January 22, 1998, he described the papers he was sending to the library:

. . . the office files [contain] cases in which I wrote either a majority or dissenting opinion. There are relatively few case files from the earliest years of my tenure on the court, because many files of that period were discarded routinely. More recently, since it has come to my attention that the archives would be interested, I have retained many more files. These files, while of varying importance, serve to illustrate the broad range of subject matter dealt with by the United States Court of Appeals. The files also illustrate my particular way of working. Each file contains my notes at the hearing and most contain both a pre-hearing and a post-hearing memorandum by a law clerk. I wrote by hand a draft of each opinion and after it was typed out, a copy was given to a law clerk who worked with me in producing the final draft. . . .

I did not include case files from any of the cases where the court issued an unpublished opinion. As our docket grew, we considered more and more cases without oral argument and these usually produced unpublished opinions. The cases in which we issued such unpublished opinions were usually quite routine and repetitive or were totally fact-specific.

While he served on the bench, Judge Lively performed many administrative duties for his circuit, as well as for the Judicial Conference. For the latter, he served on the Advisory Committee on Federal Rules for Appellate Procedure (FRAP) and the Standing Committee of Rules of Practice and Procedure. The Sixth Circuit administrative work as well as these committee activities are documented in the collection.

Use Restrictions