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Feat of Clay: Muhammad Ali’s Legal Fight against the Vietnam Draft

2019; Wiley; Volume: 44; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/sch.2019.0005

1540-5818

Winston Bowman,

Legal Systems and Judicial Processes

Feat of Clay: Muhammad All’s Legal Fight against the Vietnam Draft WINSTON BOWMAN Introduction Few cases are simultaneously as well known and as misunderstood as Clay v. United States (1971), the Supreme Court decision that overturned boxing legend Muhammad Ali’s conviction for draft evasion.1 Even many ofthose who remember the case erroneously believe that Ali served time for his beliefs.2 Other observers have described Clay as a landmark in the history of religious freedom, although the Court’s per curiam decision had little to say on that issue.3 Moreover, the case broke relatively little new ground in the law of conscientious objection, even though it is probably the best-known conscientious objection case in Supreme Court history; indeed, the Court never actually held that Ali was a consci­ entious objector.4 As an exemplar of the premise that personal belief is illegible to the machinery of the legal system, however, the case is virtually without parallel. The whole investigative apparatus of the modern American state was brought to bear on the interrogation and interpretation of Ali’s beliefs after he claimed that, as an adherent and minister ofthe Nation of Islam, he could not serve in the military. Often labeled the world’s most famous man in his prime, Ali never lived a private life.5 As his pleas progressed through the Selective Ser­ vice System and the federal courts, however, the scrutiny accompanying his every word and deed increased. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), for example, conducted a remarkably detailed investigation into his background, interviewing his family, busi­ ness partners, ex-wife, neighbors, and even high school teachers.6 Recently declassified documents suggest the FBI also employed informants within the Nation of Islam who reported, inter alia, on Ali’s activities with the group.7 Nevertheless, what strikes one who pores over the thousands of pages of Ali’s court records is the extent to which the objective reality of his subjective beliefs remains ut­ terly inscrutable for all that scrutiny. This is not simply a byproduct of the hesitancy 308 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY to dig into religious convictions that federal courts espoused both before and since Clay? Indeed, as Jeremey Kessler has shown, con­ scientious objection stood as an exception to that general trend. In the draft context, many saw greater bureaucratic attention to individual belief as a bulwark of religious conscience.9 Instead, Ali’s case exemplifies the breakdown of that vision and the broader failure of attempts to fashion the adminis­ trative state into a guardian of individual freedom in mid-century America. Ali’s Conversion Ali was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1942. His parents named him Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., and raised him in the Baptist tradition.10 It seems likely that he was first exposed to the Nation of Islam in or around 1959. Over the course of the early 1960s, he attended events at mosques, but it is hard to say when he became a regular devotee.11 Witnesses questioned as part of the FBI inquiry into Ali’s conscien­ tious objector status placed his conversion in every year from 1959 to 1964.12 Although Ali’s brother Rahman (nee Rudolph) also converted, the rest of his family seems to have disdained Islam, and Ali appears to have kept his religious views to himselfinitially, at least in part because he feared their revelation would adversely affect his career.13 Shortly after scraping through high school, Ali won gold at the 1960 Olympics in Rome.14 He subsequently turned profes­ sional and worked his way up the ranks until he astounded critics by defeating heavily favored champion Sonny Liston in 1964.15 The young boxer’s growing reputation in the ring was eclipsed only by his ebullient and self-aggrandizing public persona. Ali had a quick wit and a knack for playing both the heel and the clown. He also covered doubts and uncomfortable truths with boasts.16 The champion’s tendency to fudge facts in this way makes it difficult to gauge the accuracy of claims he later made about his religious conversion.17 The swirl of controversy that followed him throughout the 1960s...