UpDate - Vol. 13, No. 8, Page 7
October 21, 1993
New book; Professor provides insight into District Court

     The evolution of the United States District Court in Delaware reflects
American and Delaware history since the country's founding, according to
Carol Hoffecker, associate provost for graduate studies and Richards
Professor of History.
     The author of Federal Justice in the First State, a History of the
United States District Court for the Discrict of Delaware, Hoffecker said
when she began the book she did not know about the inner workings of the
court except in a peripheral way as it concerned her research on Delaware
history. However, she soon became intensely interested.
     "The influence of the court, the decisions handed down, the judges who
presided, the politics of the appointments were intriguing and gave me a
different perspective on events and the persons involved," she said.
     The project was launched when it was decided at the U.S. Supreme Court
level that each federal district court should form a historical society.
Delaware Chief Judge Joseph J. Longobardi initiated the idea of a book
about the history of the Delaware federal court.
     He contacted Hoffecker to discuss the project, along with Harvey
Rubenstein, president of the Delaware Bar Association, and Norman E.
Levine, president of the Delaware chapter of the Federal Bar Association.
     Hoffecker agreed to author the book if others in the legal profession
assisted with the research and interpretation. "It was a collaborative
project from the beginning, involving several attorneys, who were each
assigned a judge to research.
     They followed through on their commitments and worked with enthusiasm
on the project," she said.
     She did much of her research for the book in the U.S. Archives in
Philadelphia, where the court's records are stored, at the University's
Morris Library and at the Historical Society of Delaware.
     There were some landmark cases over the centuries, according to
Hoffecker. Many cases dealt with admiralty issues. One typical case
involved a ship which became loose from its moorings during a storm in
Lewes and was rescued by some bay pilots. The litigation was over how much
of the cargo then belonged to the pilots who salvaged the boat.
     After the Civil War, another case involved men from South Carolina who
had killed some Union soldiers occupying their state. They were tried by a
military court and imprisoned at Fort Delaware. They contended that they
were improperly tried as civilians by a military court.
     Although Judge Willard Hall, for whom the College of Education
building is named, had strong Union and anti-slavery sympathies, he ruled
in favor of the South Carolinians who were then freed. This case attracted
nation-wide attention and did much to re-establish one rule of law in the
south.
     By the 1920's many companies were incorporated in Delaware, and cases
involving patent infringements and corporate litigation filled the court's
docket.
     Although some of these cases could be tried in other states where
companies had headquarters, many chose to have them tried in Delaware where
Judge Hugh Morris, for whom the Morris Library is named, presided.
     According to Hoffecker, Morris had a national reputation for being
fair-minded and intelligent handling corporate litigation. One of the cases
that came before the court involved German patents, acquired by the U.S.
Government, which the Wilson administration sold fairly cheaply after World
War I through a government corporation called Chemical Foundation.
     The Harding administration, in a political move to discredit the
previous administration, brought suit against the Chemical Foundation.
Judge Morris ruled that the Wilson administration had acted properly in
establishing Chemical Foundation and in selling the patents, a decision
which benefited Du Pont and other American chemical companies, Hoffecker
said.
     In more recent times, the desegregation case of Evans vs. Buchanan
changed the school districts and educational structure of New Castle County
with far-reaching effects up to the present, Hoffecker said. As the
caseload has increased, so has the number of judges. In earlier days, one
judge presided over the court. Also, as federal regulations have increased
and the battle against crime and drugs has escalated, so has the caseload
for the court, Hoffecker said.
     When a judge is appointed, the state's senior senator from the party
in the White House has considerable say in the selection.
     Hoffecker wrote a chapter about former U.S. Sen. John Williams'
appointments to the federal court during the Eisenhower years. He was under
considerable pressure from the federal government and the Republican party
to change his nominations, as his papers in the Morris Library attest, but
he stuck to his principles and saw that his choices were appointed,
Hoffecker said.
     In summing up the history of the District Court for Delaware,
Hoffecker writes that the court "has been served by judges who have placed
the Constitution above their personal feelings or the vagaries of popular
sentiment. The strength of character of those judges, together with their
ability to interpret the law and to apply the law, has been essential to
maintaining our constitutional government, our personal freedoms and our
economic system.
                                                  -Sue Swyers Moncure