Judge Jack B. Schmetterer 1931-2021
Bankruptcy Judge Jack Schmetterer rarely if ever saw things in terms of black and white-which sounds unusual for a judge. But it's a characteristic that helped him seek justice everywhere and see life as so darned interesting.
Judge Schmetterer died December 1, 2021, in his Northbrook home. He is survived by his wife, Barbara Friedman, three children (Laura, Mark, and Ken), their spouses (Mark, Sher, and Nancee), nine grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.
Some things held no middle ground with him. He despised injustice and sloth, and he mistrusted people who refused to learn. On the other hand, he took delight in challenging work, interesting food, fruit trees, enjoying a cruise on the Queen Mary, Gilbert and Sullivan, and seeing that his family was well taken care of. He also valued precision-in thinking and communicating.
He was an integral part of Chicago history in the latter part of the 20th century, particularly in the U.S. Attorney's Office and State's Attorney's offices, dealing with issues like school desegregation, labor and racial strife, the turbulent 1968 Democratic National Convention, and environmental atrocities. From 1985 until his retirement in September 2021, he continued a life of public service in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois, where he fought to balance the rights of debtors and creditors, while improving court processes and ensuring that all clients who appeared before him were treated fairly, taking particular care to ensure that those without legal representation understood their rights.
In 2016, he sat down for an "oral history" interview with fellow bankruptcy judge Eugene Wedoff (now retired), and it is in that history that distinguishing characteristics shine through-self-deprecation, humor, optimism, strong opinions, values. "You know, it doesn't matter whether you're a liberal or a conservative," he told Judge Wedoff. "The only thing that matters is whether you're a decent person."
Jack Schmetterer was born in 1931. His father, Sam, had emigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire when he was 7 years old. A graduate of Kent Law School in Chicago, Sam was a general practice lawyer in Chicago. His mother, Gertrude was born in the United States; her family emigrated from Latvia before World War I. She devoted her life to raising their two sons in Oak Park-Jack and his older brother, Ben.
He went to Yale University as an undergrad and graduated in the "Scholar of the House" program, for which he wrote a paper on the political and economic forces behind the St. Lawrence Seaway, which had yet to be built. "One of the great sidelines of being in the Scholar of the House Program was I didn't take any courses, he said. "I took no examinations. So I audited the very best courses at Yale, the very best professors. It was really a delightful year." He also attended Oxford University in England during the summer of 1952 to study the United Kingdom's foreign policy.
He was accepted to both Harvard and Yale law schools, and ultimately chose Yale, explaining that "in New Haven, you get some of the best Italian food in the country." He worked as a counselor to help with room and board.
Before getting his law degree, he met his wife-to-be, Joan Ruther, whose sister had been dating his brother. "Took her to Ravinia, where she tried to keep talking during the concert when I was trying to listen."
The two married in 1957, and soon thereafter, he enlisted in the Army. After basic training, he was transferred to Military Police school in Georgia. While there, he took advantage of opportunities to learn and to teach. "We taught martial law and military government subjects to reserve officers who had governed cities in World War II. We were enlisted soldiers who were doing that."
To help the young couple's finances, Joan sold cemetery plots for a while, then took a teaching job in a segregated school. "They didn't believe in the Constitution," he said later. When Joan was ordered to bring the class for school prayer, she refused, citing the Supreme Court. "We were poor as church-mice" and needed the income from her teaching position, he often said, but "She was a very feisty lady." (Joan died in October 1998. In 2001, Jack married Barbara Friedman, a family lawyer in La Porte, Indiana.)
After his discharge, he worked with his father in general practice for six and a half years. In 1963, with an introduction from a former teacher-Nicholas Katzenbach (later United States Attorney General during the Johnson administration)-he got a job in the civil division of the U.S. Attorney's office in Chicago. He remained with that office six and a half years, eventually serving as Chief of the civil division, and thereafter First Assistant U.S. Attorney during his final four years.
New Assistant U.S. Attorneys under his supervision later recounted how Schmetterer made them read the famous words and admonition of former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, explaining that a prosecutor's ability to curtail life, liberty, and reputation demands the work be done with respect for constitutional safeguards and in the service of justice-not one's career or an overzealous attempt to secure convictions at all costs.
He spoke particularly fondly about his work as Chief of the Civil Division, calling it "one of the really happy jobs in this town," he said. "I mean, I could work on anything I wanted to since I was chief. We had very important stuff," including intervening in strikes by postal workers and air traffic controllers.
Working in the U.S. Attorney's office under Thomas Foran, he participated in the first school desegregation case in the Northern states, a suit brought against School District 151 in the southern part of Cook County. The case was ultimately heard in 1968 by Julius Hoffman, who the following year would preside over the so-called "Chicago Seven" trial. The school district was ordered to desegregate, and the judgment was sustained by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
During the 1968 Democratic Convention, assistant U.S. attorneys were on the street. "You just have no idea how crazy it was," he said, given troops on the street and machine guns on the bridges. Later, Chicago Police Superintendent James Rochford would testify he lost control of his men, who waded into a marching crowd violently on national television. Schmetterer and colleagues prosecuted police for misconduct, including a policeman who was charged with a civil rights violation (voluntary manslaughter of a person he had arrested) and other cases against officers involved in disturbances that night. All civil rights defendants were found not guilty, he said. "There's no harder case than prosecuting a policeman who is accused of misusing force," he said later. "The public doesn't want to believe their police do that."
In November 1968, Richard Nixon, the Republican candidate, won the White House, but the incoming administration asked Foran-a Democrat-and his team to remain to finish prosecuting the Chicago Seven and to pursue a Chicago school faculty desegregation case. Again, tumultuous events followed Schmetterer and his colleagues when, in December 1969, Chicago police, executing a search warrant for illegal guns on the West Side of Chicago, killed Black Panthers leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.
"We could not consider prosecutions for any civil rights violation on the federal side when the Panthers all clammed up and refused to testify," he recalled. But the U.S. Attorney did convene a federal grand jury, which ultimately issued a report on the events during the Convention. The Cook County State's Attorney at the time, Ed Hanrahan, would later be prosecuted for conspiracy, but that case was ultimately thrown out. After convening the grand jury and examining the case, "I didn't consider Hanrahan culpable in any regard, morally or legally," he said later.
In 1970, he became partner in a firm that specialized in plaintiffs' civil antitrust work, but in 1972, Hanrahan asked him to join the State's Attorney's office as First Assistant. For Schmetterer, it was another opportunity to learn, to serve, and to be part of history. "The State's Attorney's office has far greater impact on the community, the public and the law than the U.S. Attorney's office," he said later.
As First Assistant State's Attorney, Schmetterer improved the way the office reviewed potential felony cases and strengthened search warrant procedures to protect against government abuse. He also investigated and issued indictments around voter fraud. "The first election fraud indictments in a million years in Cook County," he said. The office investigated policemen who were robbing dope peddlers and selling their goods for profit. "I'll never forget when we went out to try to arrest some policemen on the street for doing that," he recalled. "There's nothing more dangerous than arresting a crooked cop on the street."
Although Schmetterer was immersed in Chicago politics, he was not of Chicago politics and often resisted the "Chicago Way", as illustrated by a story about his tenure as First Assistant State's Attorney he shared about John Boyle, Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County from 1963 to 1978. "A tough guy," he called Boyle, who had been an alderman in the City of Chicago prior to being seated on the bench.
"We were short-handed and we couldn't get the county to give us more prosecutors," he recalled, speaking of his early months at the State's Attorney office. "So I went to John Boyle and said, 'Would you consider appointing some special prosecutors so we could get more people here?' He says, 'Well, why don't you get it from the county board?' I said, 'They won't do it.' He said, 'Well, open an investigation on the county road system.' I said, 'What do you mean? What kind of investigation? I've got no reason to open one up. Why should I do that?'" Schmetterer didn't quite understand. So Boyle had to spell it out for him. "He said, 'Well, you open it up and they'll give you more prosecutors.' Now, I don't know whether he knew anything about the road system, the highway department, or something, but I couldn't think that way about use of a prosecutor's investigative power." Ultimately, instead of using Boyle's approach, Schmetterer implemented the straight-and-narrow approach, obtaining federal grants to expand the county's program in felony screening.
In 1974, Hanrahan was voted out of office, forcing Schmetterer to look elsewhere for work. The timing was right, as he and Joan had three children to support and one day put through college. He became a partner at Chicago law firm Gottlieb and Schwartz and worked primarily in commercial litigation. As the firm made plans to reorganize in 1985, he filed an application to become a bankruptcy judge, despite having worked on just one bankruptcy case in his career.
"They were nice people who interviewed me," he recalled. "I remember telling them, 'I don't know very much at all about bankruptcy. Somebody said, 'Oh, you can learn.'" And he did, studying "Ginsburg on Bankruptcy" by Judge Robert Ginsburg, attending courses, and learning from respected colleagues, such as Judges Tom James, John Schwartz, David Coar, Susan Sonderby, Ginsberg and Wedoff. "Because we help each other, this job is really very easy," he said.
As he did with the State's Attorney's office, he set about improving processes at the Bankruptcy Court. "When I came here, I felt I was coming into a real court, and there were real lawyers in front of me," he said later. "Therefore, we should do things in a real way. Lawyers had to do things with rules of evidence. We had to set up trials that were actually going to go forward unless there was some really serious reasons. I used to use World War III as an illustration for a continuance," though he did allow for illness of counsel.
He met resistance among lawyers when he decided to tighten up the fee application process. "I'd read a fee app and I'd have to say, 'Well, I don't know two things: I don't know what work you did, and I don't know what you accomplished,'" he said. He instituted rules demanding detailed fee applications. "At first were reluctant to do some things that we require but once they got over that hump, it's very easy to read the applications."
Even so, years later, he recalled former Chief Judge of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Joel Flaum asking him, "How's it feel to be the most hated bankruptcy judge in the United States?'
Despite a tough and aggressive reputation on the bench, he worked tirelessly to apply the law fairly and accurately, and he ensured that due process rights were safeguarded, taking particular time to ensure that parties unrepresented by counsel understood court procedures and how to protect their rights. He posted a recommended reading list, and admonished lawyers in his court who failed to provide proper notice to debtors (many of whom lacked counsel) to read Franz Kafka's The Trial-a story about a man arrested and prosecuted without ever knowing the charges or evidence against him-as a reminder of the importance of transparency and due process in the justice system.
Schmetterer loved his work. "Every day is fun," he said of his job in Bankruptcy Court. "The lawyers think of new ideas. It's phenomenal how they take the old laws and somehow they've got new ideas perking up. That's what makes the job pretty interesting and challenging." Serving as a bankruptcy judge "is essentially a job where a lawyer or a judge can be most helpful to people-many people, huge volumes of people."
Civic life and public service was at the core of Judge Schmetterer's DNA, even outside of his daily work. He served as Trustees of the Northbrook Village Board and North Shore Mass Transit District Board, and he led and served organizations as diverse as Just The Beginning-A Pipeline Organization, Better Government Association, Federal Bar Association, Decalogue Society, Justice Lodge B'nai B'rith, Chicago Crime Commission, John Howard Association, and many more.
In his final years, he remained grateful for his good fortune to have led a productive, meaningful, and civic life. Even in the face of health challenges, he remained concerned, not for himself, but for the well-being of his wife Barbara, his children and their families, his friends, former staff, and law clerks.
As a lifelong student of American history-and frequently observing that he had lived well over a third of the history of the United States itself-he was particularly concerned in his final years about what he saw as an increasingly troubled and divisive nation, with fraying support for the nation's constitutional democratic principles. He regularly voiced his hope that the nation he had proudly served for so many years would find its way.
Even if Jack Schmetterer did not embrace the traditional "Chicago Way," he offered the community a better, more just way. He will be missed.