Sunday Review: Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight

A court chambers drama

By Morris Dean

Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight (HBO October 5, 2013, directed by Stephen Frears) isn't about any of heavyweight boxing champion aka Cassius Clay's fights in the ring, or his struggle with Parkinson's Disease. And, in a way, it isn't even about Muhammad Ali exactly. It's about the 1971 fight inside the chambers of the United States Supreme Court Justices as they argue whether to hear the boxer's appeal of a lower-court ruling upholding his being stripped of his championship title and kicked out of boxing for refusing to serve in the Vietnam War by reason of his membership in the Nation of Islam (the Black Muslims). The case is Clay v. United States.
    Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (appointed by Nixon in 1967 and portrayed by Frank Langella) introduces the case with the presumption that of course they won't hear it, and he summarily tosses it on the reject pile. Hey, says Eisenhower-appointee Associate Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. (Peter Gerety), wait a minute....
    The drama involved is conjectural, though based on the 2000 book Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight: Cassius Clay vs. the United States of America, by Howard Bingham and Max Wallace, which I have not read. We don't know what really happened. But the fictional account is good theater. Justice Brennan is able to persuade two other justices to vote to hear the appeal, then a fourth joins to "give Ali his day in court." A 4-4 vote is sufficient because Justice Thurgood Marshall, appointed by Johnson in 1967 and played by Danny Glover, had to recuse himself because he had been the Solicitor General when the case arose.
    After the court hears the case, Justice Brennan is able to persuade only two of those who joined him to hear the case to vote now to reverse the lower court's ruling (Potter Stewart, Eisenhower's 1958 appointee, played by Barry Levinson, and William O. Douglas, appointed by Roosevelt in 1939 and played by Harris Yulin), for a 3-5 vote. The majority opinion will be that Muhammad Ali meets only two of the three requirements for conscientious objector status: sincere belief and religious grounds. They reject that he refuses to serve in all wars, since the Black Muslims would fight in a "holy war."
    Then the story gets even better. Chief Justice Burger assigns Justice John Marshall Harlan II (whose grandfather had also been a Supreme Court justice) to write the opinion rejecting the appeal. (Harlan, played by Christopher Plummer, was appointed by Eisenhower in 1955.) Harlan of course asks one of his clerks, a composite character named Kevin Connolly (played by Benjamin Walker), to write the opinion, directing him what points to make and what conclusion to reach. Connolly, who has been established as a liberal-leaning defender of the Constitution, tries to refuse but Harlan insists. And he wants it in the morning.
    Connolly agonizes over the task but discovers a precedent involving a Jehovah's Witness (Sicurella v. United States) that he thinks can't be distinguished from Ali's case involving the Nation of Islam. But can he convince his boss?
    I could of course tell you, but I've already told you maybe too much to avoid spoiling the film for you. I will, though, tell you who the other justices were:

• Justice Harry Blackmun (played by Ed Begley Jr., appointed by Nixon the year after he appointed Burger, another Minnesotan, and one who generally followed Burger's lead; Burger, by the way, is portrayed as being in continuous communication with Nixon, whose political lead he tended to follow)
• Justice Hugo Black (played by Fritz Weaver, appointed by Roosevelt in 1937; he is portrayed as deeply opposed to the Vietnam War and wishing they could rule against it)
• Justice Byron White (played by John Bedford Lloyd, appointed by Kennedy in 1962)

I said that the movie wasn't really about Muhammad Ali. However, as one of the justices remarks, they wouldn't be hearing the case if it weren't about race and the black man involved weren't Muhammad Ali, who was not only a great boxer and colorful versifier (as shown exclusively through archival footage—I remember as a 21-year-old the excitement of hearing on the radio 22-year-old Cassius Clay recite witty verses after upsetting Sonny Liston for the championship in February 1964), but also a passionate, thoughtful advocate for conscientious objection to war and civil rights. One of the archival clips shows Ali telling someone—maybe it was Dick Cavett?—his thoughts and feelings about going to jail for refusing to serve in Vietnam: "Better in that bed / than in Vietnam dead."
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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean

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