Mikva was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of Ida (Fishman) and Henry Abraham Mikva, Jewish immigrants escaping from pogroms in Ukraine.[1] Mikva and his parents spoke Yiddish at home.[2] During the Great Depression, his father was often unemployed and the family relied on welfare.[2] Abner attended local public schools. During World War II, he enlisted and was trained in the United States Army Air Corps, but the war ended the day before he was due to be deployed.[2] Afterward, the GI Bill enabled Mikva to attend the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee[3] before transferring to Washington University in St. Louis, where he met his future wife, Zorita Rose (Zoe) Wise. Both graduated in 1948 and soon married.[2]
After graduation, Mikva clerked for Supreme Court JusticeSherman Minton.[6] He also returned to Chicago and began practicing law, at a firm which became Goldberg, Devoe, Shadur & Mikva after he made partner. The firm handles labor, real estate, commercial and civil rights cases, as well as some criminal defense.[2]
Mikva as a U.S. representative during the 1970s
Nonetheless, his early interest in Chicago clearly was politics:
One of the stories that is told about my start in politics is that on the way home from law school one night in 1948, I stopped by the ward headquarters in the ward where I lived. There was a street-front, and the name Timothy O'Sullivan, Ward Committeeman, was painted on the front window. I walked in and I said, "I'd like to volunteer to work for [Adlai] Stevenson and [Paul] Douglas." This quintessential Chicago ward committeeman took the cigar out of his mouth and glared at me and said, "Who sent you?" I said, "Nobody sent me." He put the cigar back in his mouth and he said, "We don't want nobody that nobody sent." This was the beginning of my political career in Chicago.[7]
He spent ten years, 1956 to 1966, in the Illinois House of Representatives.[8] He was defeated for reelection in 1966, but "reinvented himself" as a community activist, winning election to the United States Congress in 1968.[9] In the Illinois House, Mikva was part of the "Kosher Nostra", a group of independent, clean Democrats that included future United States Senator and Presidential candidate Paul Simon, future Illinois Comptroller and candidate for Governor Dawn Clark Netsch, and Representative Anthony Scariano.[10] He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1969 to 1973 and 1975 to 1979.
He first represented Illinois's 2nd District, which included the South Side's lakefront wards including Hyde Park, his residence and the University of Chicago.[11] Both parties attempted to redistrict Mikva out of Congress.[12] The redistricting for the 1972 elections put Hyde Park in the 1st District[12] for the first time since 1903. This would have pitted Mikva against Democratic incumbent Ralph Metcalfe in a nearly 90% black district; moving to stay in the 2nd District would have matched him against Democratic incumbent Morgan F. Murphy, who had previously represented the 3rd District.[13] Mikva instead moved to the North Shore's 10th District.
After he was defeated by RepublicanSamuel H. Young in 1972,[11] he ran in the 1974 Democratic wave election and beat Young with 50.9% of the vote; his status was enhanced in the predominantly Republican, suburban district because he was viewed as critical of the Chicago Democratic establishment.[14] In 1976, he was reelected by 201 votes against Young in a rematch that was one of the most expensive congressional races up to that time.[11] When he defeated Republican State Representative John Porter by 650 votes in 1978, he joked to supporters that he had "won by a landslide." Porter won the seat after Mikva resigned to become a federal judge.
During his 15 years as judge, including four as Chief Judge, Mikva used his experience in the legislative branch as well as with the conservative Justice Minton to craft his opinions. Mikva's most controversial decisions struck down the Pentagon ban against gay people serving in the U.S. military (overturned on appeal by the circuit sitting en banc, but the ban was ultimately overturned by Executive Order), and - in 1982 - upheld regulation of air bags in automobiles.[2]
In 1992, while serving as Chief Judge on the D.C. Circuit, Mikva appeared in the Kevin Kline comedy Dave as "Supreme Court Justice Abner J. Mikva," in a scene in which he administers the presidential oath of office to the Vice President (played by Ben Kingsley).[19]
Post-judicial career
Mikva taught law at Northwestern University and was White House Counsel under President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1995, finding himself the oldest member of the White House team, and eventually resigning due to exhaustion.[2] He then returned to the University of Chicago Law School, serving as the Schwarz Lecturer and the senior director of the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic. While at the University, Mikva came to better know future president Barack Obama, whom he mentored and supported politically. Obama awarded Mikva the Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 24, 2014.[20] Mikva offered Obama a law clerk position in his judicial office after Obama graduated from Harvard Law School, but Obama declined.[citation needed] Future Obama appointee and United States Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan did serve as one of Mikva's law clerks and was then a professor at the University of Chicago Law School.[21] Mikva also encouraged Obama to listen to preachers to understand public speaking, "listen[ing] to patterns of speech, how to take people up the ladders. It's almost a Baptist tradition to make someone faint, and, by God, he's doing it now."[21]
Other pursuits
Mikva served as a mediator through JAMS, and was co-chairman of the Constitution Project's bipartisan Constitutional Amendments Committee.[22] In November 2004, Mikva was an international election monitor of Ukraine's contested presidential election.[23] In July 2006, Illinois GovernorRod Blagojevich named Mikva chair of the Illinois Human Rights Commission.[24] In 2009, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn requested that Mikva lead a commission investigating the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign for admitting applicants[5] (many of whom were not very well qualified) whose relatives or backers had connections to and had donated money to Illinois state lawmakers.[5]
^"Abner Mikva". University of Chicago Law School. Archived from the original on November 13, 2007. Retrieved November 24, 2007. He started his political career in 1956 in the Illinois House of Representatives, where he served five consecutive terms.
^Gillion, Daniel Q. (September 2020). "Protest works". The Atlantic. p. 24.
