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Retired Justice Byron White dies at 84

Byron White

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White died Monday in Denver of complications from pneumonia, a Supreme Court official announced. He was 84.

White, who retired in 1993, spent 31 years on the Supreme Court and wrote more than 500 opinions. Yet his impact on the law may have been more pragmatic than philosophical.

"I think Justice White certainly didn't seek headlines," said Richard Cordray, who was a law clerk for White in 1987-1988. ''He had, I think, a modest view of himself as a justice on the Supreme Court."

White did make national headlines as a star quarterback on the University of Colorado football team in the 1930s and professionally with the Pittsburgh Pirates (now the Steelers).

He later played for the Detroit Lions while attending Yale Law School following a year at Oxford University in England as a Rhodes scholar.

He arrived in Washington bearing the gridiron nickname "Whizzer," an appellation one of his law clerks said "he did not seek, did not like and could not shake."

White was able to keep a lower profile as a justice.

"I also am very pleased that I can walk around Washington, D.C., up and down the streets and very, very seldom will I ever be recognized," he said in 1993.

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White was just 44 when President John F. Kennedy named him to the high court in 1962. He had served as U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy's deputy at the Justice Department and led federal marshals into Alabama to enforce civil rights laws.

Yet, as a justice, White wrote fierce dissents against landmark decisions on individual rights.

White called the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision establishing a woman's right to abortion "an exercise of raw judicial power."

The 1966 Miranda v. Arizona decision requiring police making arrests to read a suspect his rights provoked another dissent: "I see nothing wrong or immoral, and certainly nothing unconstitutional in the police's asking a suspect whether or not he killed his wife."

White wrote the majority opinion in the 1986 decision upholding Georgia's statute criminalizing sodomy. White said any claim of gay rights activists to such conduct "is, at best, facetious."

"He didn't leave a legacy of broad sweeping decisions that were legislative in character that attempted to lay down broad principles," Cordray said.

White once said the court's job, in part, was to figure out what Congress meant in passing legislation.

"When we find out," he said, "we're supposed to enforce that law unless it's unconstitutional, even if we think the law is a silly law."

Chief Justice William Rehnquist issued a statement late Monday remembering White as a "good colleague and a great friend."

"He came as close as anyone I have known to meriting Matthew Arnold's description of Sophocles: 'He saw life steadily and he saw it whole,'" Rehnquist said.

Other Supreme Court justices issued statements echoing praise of White as a remarkably straight-speaking individual.

"If there is one adjective that never could, never would, be applied to Byron White, it is wishy-washy," said Justice Antonin Scalia.

"You always knew where he stood, knew that he was not likely to be moved, and hoped that he was lining up on your side of scrimmage."

A warm personal recollection came from Justice John Paul Stevens, who met White in Pearl Harbor during World War II and served with White longer than any of the other current court members.

"He was the kind of person for whom respect, admiration and affection continue to increase as you learn more about him," Stevens said.

In a statement, President Bush said he and his wife were "saddened by the news" and described White as "a distinguished jurist who served his country with honor and dedication. He will be missed."

White remained active in his retirement, occasionally sitting as an appellate judge on the Court of Appeals and serving as chairman of a commission on "Structural Alternatives for the Federal Court of Appeals" from 1997 to 1999.

White is survived by his wife, Marion, a son, Charles Byron White, a daughter, Nancy White Lippe, and six grandchildren. He was born June 8, 1917.

Details on funeral arrangements were not immediately available.

-- CNN Producer Terry Frieden contributed to this report.