Excerpt

John R. Brown, who sat with Judge Joseph C. Hutcheson Jr. on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, once noted that "Hutcheson, the Judge, cannot be divorced from Hutcheson, the man....What he does as a judge, what he has done for the law, are the product of this total and unique personality."1 Variously called a "martinet" and "an old-time southern hot-head," Hutcheson was a man of "forthright and unconventional" outlook whose quick, combative, and confident personality is recalled by those who knew him with awe, respect and fear twenty-five years after his death.2 Brown, who considered Hutcheson as friend, still described the Judge as "haughty, all the way irascible, domineering,... [a] superior intellect who had a quick mind... [and was] quick to order people around him in a very demanding sort of way."3 Hutcheson, he went on to say, was a man who "despised somebody who simply agreed with him. If you disagree with him, you'd better tell him so."4