Roy Solfisburg

Roy J. Solfisburg, Jr. (1912–1991) was the Chief Justice of Illinois for the 1962-63 term and again from 1967 to 1969, when he was forced to resign following Sherman Skolnick's revelations that Solfisburg and Associate Justice Ray Klingbiel had corruptly accepted stock from the Civic Center Bank & Trust Company (CCB) of Chicago at the same time that litigation involving the CCB was pending at the Illinois Supreme Court.

Background

Solfisburg was born in Aurora, Illinois in 1912 and attended public school in Aurora. He received his LL.B. from the University of Illinois College of Law in 1940.

Returning to Aurora, Solfisburg served as the city's Corporation Counsel from 1949 to 1953.

Judicial career

In 1953, Solfisburg became a Commissioner of the Illinois Court of Claims. In 1954, he became the Master in Chancery of the Circuit Court of Kane County. In 1956, he won a by-election held to fill a vacancy in the position of Circuit Judge for the 16th Judicial Division; he was re-elected in 1957. In July 1957, the Illinois Supreme Court appointed Solfisburg to the Appellate Court, Second Division; he served as that court's Presiding Judge from 1959 to 1960.

Solfisburg was elected to the Illinois Supreme Court in 1960. He served as Chief Justice for the 1962-63 term and in 1967, his colleagues elected him to a 3-year term as Chief Justice. In the wake of Abe Fortas's resignation, Solfisburg was mentioned in the media as a possible replacement for Fortas on the Supreme Court of the United States, which is somewhat ironic because Solfisburg would soon be forced to resign in circumstances similar to those which forced Fortas to resign. (Senators Everett Dirksen and Charles H. Percy both encouraged President Richard Nixon to appoint Solfisburg to the Supreme Court.)

The 1969 scandal

In 1969, Sherman Skolnick, head of the Citizens' Committee to Clean Up the Courts, examined the stockholder records and discovered that both Solfisburg and Associate Justice Klingbiel owned stock in the CCB. This made him suspicious since in "People v. Isaacs", the Supreme Court had upheld a dismissal of charges against Theodore J. Isaacs, the general counsel of the CCB and the records showed that the two justices acquired the stock shortly before their decision in "Isaacs". Skolnick contacted several members of the media, and the story was broken in the Alton "Evening-Telegraph" before being picked up by all the major papers.

The Illinois House of Representatives unanimously voted to appoint a special committee to investigate the matter, but before it could act, the Supreme Court, acting on its "inherent powers" granted a motion filed by Skolnick to appoint a special commission to investigate. (Ironically, the regular commission that investigated judicial malfeasance was chaired by Associate Justice Klingbiel, who was also accused of wrongdoing by Skolnick.) The commission was co-chaired by the president of the Chicago Bar Association and the president of the Illinois Bar Association. They named John Paul Stevens, a private practitioner with a thriving antitrust practice, as their independent counsel, thus setting the stage for Stevens' meteoric rise to the Supreme Court of the United States.

During the course of the investigation, Stevens discovered that Solfisburg in fact held $14,000 worth of CCB stock. He uncovered many irregularities in which steps were taken to conceal the owners of the stock, most damningly that Solfisburg appeared to have established a trust fund to hold the stock solely for the purpose of concealing his ownership from the public record. There was also evidence that Solfisburg had had a long relationship with Isaacs prior to "People v. Isaacs".

The special committee recommended that Solfisburg and Klingbiel (who became involved when Solfisburg suggested to one of Isaacs' associates that CCB should "do something nice" for Klingbiel and CCB subsequently gave stock to Klingbiel) should resign. This led to both the justices resigning from the Illinois Supreme Court.

Later years

Following his resignation, Solfisburg returned to private practice in Aurora, taking on his first case (being appointed by a circuit court judge to represent an indigent young man challenging his conviction for burglary) less than a month after his resignation.

In 1971, one of his cases actually took Solfisburg back to the Illinois Supreme Court, this time as a lawyer not a judge. The night before his scheduled argument, Solfisburg had a heart attack in his hotel. He recovered quickly, though, and soon went on to argue and win the case. He argued before the Illinois Supreme Court again in 1984.

Solfisburg died in April 1991 in Fort Myers, Florida.

External links

* [http://www.state.il.us/COURT/SupremeCourt/JusticeArchive/Bio_Solfisburg.asp Biography at the Illinois Court's website]

* [http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/manaster/motionJune11.html Motion Filed by Sherman Skolnick, June 11, 1969]

* [http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/manaster/orderJune17.html Order Creating the Special Commission]

* [http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/manaster/commissionreport.html The Special Commission's Report]

References

Kenneth A. Manaster, "Illinois Justice: The Scandal of 1969 and the Rise of John Paul Stevens" (University of Chicago Press, 2001)