Harry L. Carrico

Harry Lee Carrico (born September 4, 1916, in Fauquier County, Virginia) is the former Chief Justice and a current Senior Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia. His tenure as an active Justice of the Court, at more than 42 years, is presently the longest term of any Justice in the Court's history. Moreover, because current law requires active Judges and Justices in Virginia to retire or take senior status on or shortly after their seventieth birthdays, it is likely that Justice Carrico's longevity record will remain unchallenged.

Justice Carrico attended Fairfax County, Virginia public schools and received his undergraduate and law degrees from George Washington University. He began his legal career as an associate in the law firm of Rust & Rust, Fairfax (1941-43); he was then appointed to serve as a trial justice and judge of Fairfax County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court (1943-51); he returned to the private practice of law (1951-56). In 1956 he was made a judge of the Fairfax County Circuit Court. He was elevated to the Supreme Court in 1961, serving as a justice until 1981 when, by virture of seniority, he became Chief Justice (the Chief Justice is no longer selected by seniority, but is elected by the Justices to a four-year term). During his tenure as Chief Justice, he served as President of the Conference of Chief Justices from 1989-90. He retired from active service in 2003 and took senior status. He was succeeded as Chief Justice by Leroy Rountree Hassell, Sr., the first black Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia. The vacancy created by his retirement was filled by G. Steven Agee, a former member of the General Assembly.

"Loving v. Commonwealth"

Justice Carrico was the author of the Virginia Supreme Court’s unanimous 1966 opinion in "Loving v. Commonwealth", upholding Virginia’s miscegenation statutes. Richard Loving and his wife, Mildred Loving, were convicted of miscegenation and sentenced to one year in prison, suspended on the condition that they leave the Commonwealth of Virginia and not return for 25 years. [ Loving v. Commonwealth, 206 Va. 924, 147 S.E.2d 78 (1966)]

In Loving, Justice Carrico stated that “There is no dispute that Richard Perry Loving is a white person and that Mildred Jeter Loving is a colored person within the meaning of Code, § 20-58. Nor is there any dispute that the actions of the defendants, as set forth in the indictment, violated the provisions of Code, § 20-58.” He went on to rely on Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 41 L. Ed. 256, 16 S. Ct. 1138 (1896) and its progeny, finding Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 98 L. Ed. 873, 74 S. Ct. 686 (1954) distinguishable, because Brown dealt with education and not marriage. Distinguishing Brown and its progeny, Justice Carrico observed that “it must be pointed out that none of them deals with miscegenation statutes or curtails a legal truth which has always been recognized that there is an overriding state interest in the institution of marriage. None of these decisions takes away from what was said by the United States Supreme Court in Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190, 31 L. Ed. 654, 657, 8 S. Ct. 723:

‘Marriage, as creating the most important relation in life, as having more to do with the morals and civilization of a people than any other institution, has always been subject to the control of the Legislature.’”

Justice Carrico further held that “Although the defendants were, by the terms of the suspended sentences, ordered to leave the state, their sentences did not technically constitute [illegal] banishment because they were permitted to return to the state, provided they did not return together or at the same time.” He therefore remanded the case so that the decision could be modified to prohibit Mr. and Mrs. Loving from cohabiting as husband and wife in Virginia, a less restrictive condition of the 25 year suspended sentence.

The Loving decision was overruled by a unanimous United States Supreme Court in 1967. In Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court, held that marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man, a fundamental freedom which could not be denied based on race.

References