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Public: Recent News

Justice Fund honoree Dickson Phillips is flanked by NCBA President Janet Ward Black and incoming Davidson College President Tom Ross.

James Dickson Phillips Jr. was honored last week through the establishment of a Justice Fund within the North Carolina Bar Association Foundation Endowment. The formal announcement took place on Thursday, July 12, in the Hunter Galleria of the N.C. Bar Center.

Phillips served on the faculty of the University of North Carolina School of Law for 18 years, including 10 years as dean, and devoted 21 years to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals bench, from which he retired in 1999.

A splendid gathering of family and friends attended the ceremony, including several colleagues from Phillips’ years as a law student and faculty member at UNC, such as Bill Friday, Bynum Hunter, Bill Aycock, Steve Millikin and former Lt. Gov. Pat Taylor.

Fourth Circuit connections were evident in the attendance of Judge Allyson K. Duncan, past-president of the NCBA who currently serves on the court, and Elisabeth Ervin of Morganton, the widow of Judge Sam Ervin III.

Phillips’ undergraduate institution, Davidson College, was well-represented by alumni Janet Ward Black, current president of the NCBA who presided over the ceremony, and incoming Davidson College President Tom Ross who introduced Phillips.

A Justice Fund is a named endowment that honors those North Carolina lawyers, past and present, whose careers have demonstrated dedication to the pursuit of justice and outstanding service to the profession and the public. One or more contributors may establish a Justice Fund to honor a colleague, family member or friend through a combined gift of $35,000.

Lawyers designated and honored by the creators of a Justice Fund receive special recognition in the form of a permanent plaque and biographical sketch maintained at the N.C. Bar Center.

The NCBA Foundation Endowment was established in 1987 to enable the foundation to fund programs and activities to better serve the public and the legal profession. As of June 2007, the endowment had awarded grants totaling $2,764,111 for 383 projects.

Icons of the UNC School of Law, from left: H. Pat Taylor, Bynum Hunter, Dickson Phillips, Bill Aycock, Bill Friday and Steve Millikin.

Biographical sketches of all Justice Fund honorees are on permanent display at the Bar Center, including the following:

James Dickson Phillips, Jr. was born in Scotland County on Sept. 23, 1922, the son of James Dickson Phillips and Helen Shepherd Phillips. He grew up in Laurinburg and attended its public schools, graduating from high school in 1939 as salutatorian of his class.

Davidson College alums turned out in support of Dickson Phillips, Class of '43.

Phillips attended Davidson College, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and, in his senior year, captain of the baseball team. He graduated with honors in 1943. Over the years, he has maintained a close relationship with the college, serving on its board of trustees and, in 1999, receiving from the college an honorary LL.D. degree.

As an ROTC graduate of Davidson in the midst of World War II, Phillips was ordered into military service immediately upon graduation. He was assigned to the Infantry Officer’s Candidate School in Ft. Benning, Ga. Commissioned in January 1944 as a second lieutenant, he volunteered for paratrooper training and, following qualification at the parachute school in Ft. Benning, was assigned to the 17th Airborne Division.

Phillips served as a rifle platoon leader in that Division’s 513th Parachute Regiment as it participated in three European campaigns: the Ardennes, Rhineland and Central Europe. Wounded on March 28, 1945, following the unit’s parachute drop with the British 6th Airborne Division over the Rhine River, Phillips was evacuated and remained hospitalized through the end of the war in Europe. For his military service, he was awarded the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart and a Presidential Unit Citation.

The dedication of the Dickson Phillips Justice Fund attracted an impressive turnout from UNC.

Upon returning home following his Army hospitalization, Phillips entered the UNC School of Law in September 1945 and graduated in February 1948. While in law school, he was an associate editor of the Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif.

Following law school graduation, he was an assistant director of the Institute of Government for a year before returning in 1949 to Laurinburg to open a law practice with Donald W. McCoy. For the next 11 years, Phillips engaged in a general law practice in Laurinburg and Fayetteville with the law firms Phillips & McCoy, and Sanford, Phillips, McCoy & Weaver.

In 1960, Phillips returned to the UNC School of Law as a faculty member. He remained on the faculty, teaching primarily in the field of procedural law, for 18 years. For 10 of those years he was dean of the school.

Phillips resigned in 1978 as an Alumni Distinguished Professor to accept appointment by President Carter as a United States Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He served as an active judge on that court for the next 21 years, retiring from full-time active service in 1999.

Dickson Phillips and Family pose beneath newly unveiled Justice Fund plaque.

Over the years of his adult life, Phillips has been richly blessed by two happy marriages, four fine children, and three lovely grandchildren. His first marriage of 12 years to Evelyn Butler of Laurinburg ended with her death in 1957, leaving two children, James Dickson Phillips, III and Evelyn (Lyn) Phillips. Three years later, in 1960, he was again blessed by marriage to Jean Nunalee of Cumberland County, followed by the birth of two children, Elizabeth Duff, and Ida Wills, who were soon united in devotion to their elder siblings, to the continued joy of their parents.

Soon after his entry into the Bar, and until recently assuming emeritus status, Phillips has been an active member of the North Carolina Bar Association. Over time, he has served as a vice president of the NCBA and been actively engaged in its committee work in various projects aimed at state procedural law improvement. Partly in recognition of this and related work as a member of the North Carolina’s Court Commission in the 1960s and ’70s, the NCBA honored him with its John J. Parker Award in 1975.

Since 1960, Phillips has been a member of the University Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill serving over time as a Deacon and Elder.