PUBLIC SERVICE
For a campaign to prevent confirmation of Francis X. Morrissey as a federal district judge in Massachusetts.
The Boston Globe’s interest in the nomination of Judge Francis X. Morrissey to the Federal District Court of Massachusetts dates back to 1961.
At the time, President John F. Kennedy asked the Justice Department to begin an investigation preliminary to the nomination for a federal judgeship.
Acting on its conviction that Judge Morrissey lacked the necessary academic and legal qualifications and also failed to measure up to President Kennedy’s often stated standard of excellence for public office holders, the Globe reported the impending nomination and for the first time cited the Boston Bar Association’s opposition to him.
On November 5 the Texas White House announces that Morrissey had requested his name be withdrawn.
In December Judge Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr., chief judge of the United States District Court, writing to the Publisher of another Boston newspaper said:
” …for the Globe to take a position contrary to the declared support of the members of the Kennedy family, of Cardinal Cushing, of the president of the First National Bank of Boston, of a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, of a lot of lesser judges, and a wide band of supporters of every religious and racial stock rook rarely equaled courage.”
-From a nominating letter by Editor Thomas Winship, January 1966