Thompson, Lincoln: Consummate lawyer politicians
Governor marks 50-year career in law, service
They call him “Big Jim” because he is six-foot-six, but the bigness of James Robert Thompson Jr. in Illinois history far exceeds linear measurement.
A 1959 graduate of the Northwestern University School of Law who will be honored Wednesday, Dec. 9, as an ISBA Senior Counsellor, Thompson is senior chairman of Winston & Strawn in Chicago.
This not the first time he will have been honored by the state bar association. In 2000, he was inducted as a member of the first class of Laureates of the ISBA Academy of Illinois Lawyers.
Thompson’s legal acumen and service on corporate boards and civic organizations continues to add content to a biography that includes having set records for election and tenure as governor of Illinois.
Thompson’s first election in 1976 was by a whopping three million votes. His plurality of 64.7 percent was exceeded only by Augustus C. French, who in 1848 polled 86.8 percent of a mere 78,179 votes.
In a touch of irony, Thompson’s third election, in 1982, was by only 5,074 votes (see related story). That 49.4 percent plurality was the lowest since 1856, when William H. Bissell was elected by only 4,787 votes and a 47 percent margin.
But his 14 years as governor is a record. Thompson’s continuous tenure from 1977 to 1991 tops the total of 13 by Ninian Edwards, who served nine years as territorial governor and, 14 years later, four more in the Vandalia statehouse.
A career in service
Jim Thompson’s first venture into public practice was as an assistant Cook County state’s attorney under Benjamin Adamowski.
The young prosecutor had been admitted a month early in October 1959 so he could argue the Escobedo case in the Illinois Supreme Court that November. He had written briefs on the case all summer.
He was called on again, four years later, to represent the state in Escobedo v. Illinois in the U.S. Supreme Court. In a 5-4 vote in 1964, however, the court ruled against the state and expanded the right of a suspect to counsel before police interrogation.
Changing his career path to education in 1964, Thompson joined his law school mentor, Fred Inbau, and became an assistant professor at Northwestern and co-author of three casebooks.
In 1969, he was chief of the Illinois attorney general’s criminal division before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney. Then in 1971, he was appointed U.S. attorney for the Northern District.
In this role, he prosecuted several high-profile corruption cases that earned national recognition, and he doubled his staff with funding from the Omnibus Crime Bill.
His cadre of assistants included such future bench and bar luminaries as Charles P. Kocoras, Anton R. Valukas, Dan K. Webb, Tyrone C. Fahner and Samuel K. Skinner
Thompson recalls having lunch once a month in the Standard Club with William J. Bauer, Michael J. Howlett and Marshall Korshak. “I sat with open mouth, listening to war stories,” he said. “We were a little boisterous.”
The experience led to Thompson’s decision to run for governor. Little did he realize that he would be vying against Howlett, his good friend. They campaigned statewide in RVs as “the odd couple of Illinois politics.”
Thompson had no money when he opened an office. “Howlett called a friend who had a used furniture business, and he delivered a truckful. His son, who ran a typewriter business, sent over a bunch. The man who turned out to be my opponent furnished my first campaign office!”
Affinity with Lincoln
A smaller room adjoins the expansive 47th-floor office that befits Jim Thompson’s position as a guru of the law, elder statesman at Winston & Strawn, and holder of 17 honorary degrees.
A few steps away, this alcove is chock full of memorabilia of the life of Abraham Lincoln, and a separate section that is devoted to Theodore Roosevelt.
Thompson traces his interest in the 16th president back to the age of nine, when he told a WGN interviewer that he’d like to be president, and through his early days as a prosecutor, working every night and most weekends.
Under Adamowski, “I absolutely fell in love with the law,” he recollects. Writing appeals and arguing mandamus suits almost non-stop, he learned more law than in any similar span of time that has followed.
“If you’re a lawyer in Illinois, and you learn about Lincoln the Lawyer, the more you learn to love the man,” he said.
An antiquer at heart, Thompson began collecting paintings, sculpture and artifacts from Lincoln lore. His interest evolved into making Lincoln Day speeches, “and it sort of grew on me,” he said.
Thompson’s collection includes four busts that Lincoln actually sat for. “The first one, done in the summer of 1860 in Chicago, without a beard, is very stylized,” he observed. “Lincoln didn’t look that good.”
An 1863 work by sculptor George Jones is one of the few that shows Lincoln smiling. Another by Jones in 1865 “shows you the weariness and despair that war brought him.”
Thompson has three different Currier & Ives versions of the same scene: Lincoln on his death bed. The first includes Mary and Tad Lincoln, but Tad did not actually attend.
In the second, Vice President Andrew Johnson, who was not in the first etching, has been added to the lineup.
In the third, “that’s Mary back there in the hall,” Thompson points out. “And who is the number-one mourner? The new president.”
In Thompson’s words, “collecting keeps the person of Abraham Lincoln alive for me.” Posing in front of a large portrait of Lincoln (photo on page 1), he adds, “I’ve done a lot of television interviews in this room.”
Life after politics
While he was in office, Jim Thompson chaired the National Governors Association, the Midwestern Governors Conference, the Council of Great Lakes Governors, and the Republican Governors Association.
When he rejoined Winston & Strawn, his strength in leadership was tapped for service as chairman and CEO from 1991 to 2006.
In 1996-97, he was a member of the American Bar Association Commission on Separation of Powers and Judicial Independence.
In 2002, after 9/11, he received a presidential appointment to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks. When its report was issued in 2004, Thompson received a proclamation from Gov. Blagojevich for his work in homeland security. He had been co-chair of the Blagojevich transition team.
Also chair of the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, he has been involved in discussions and negotiations related to the future ownership of Wrigley Field.
Among the boards on which Thompson serves are FMC Technologies and Navigant Consulting Group, and he is a chair of the Midwest U.S.-Japan Association. He is co-chair of the Illinois Criminal Code Revision and the ABA Committee on Sentencing.
This year, as he contemplates bearing the mantle of Senior Counsellor, Thompson remembers attending a Chicago Bar Association luncheon for 50-year members during his first year as a lawyer.
“One of them fell backward off of the stage,” he mused. “I thought, my God those people are old. Now, 50 years later, I don’t feel that way any more. I’ve made it!