Henry Putzel Jr. | Civil rights lawyer, 99

Henry Putzel Jr., 99, a civil rights lawyer during the era of U.S. Supreme Court-ordered desegregation who later worked for the high court, editing and polishing its rulings and opinions, died Tuesday, Sept. 2, at his home in Peterborough, N.H.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son, Henry "Pete" Putzel III.

As "reporter of decisions" at the Supreme Court from 1964 to 1979, Mr. Putzel encapsulated opinions and prepared a syllabus of the decisions, often in intricate consultation with the nine justices. He was the 13th person to hold the position since the court's establishment in 1789.

Reporters of decisions are expert grammarians. Although they do not delve into the substance of rulings, they must have an unfailing instinct about when legal citations or quotations may be amiss in a justice's opinion.

Mr. Putzel described himself as a guardian against "mod words" that defied their dictionary definitions. Members of the court were as susceptible as anyone else to fashionable words that nonetheless contributed to "cheapening the currency of language," he once told the legal scholar Paul Baier.

During his 15-year court tenure, Mr. Putzel edited or co-edited 64 volumes of the United States Reports, bound volumes of the court's opinions.

The Justice Department formed a Civil Rights Division in 1957, and Mr. Putzel was named to lead its voting and elections section. He was in that job when Chief Justice Earl Warren hired him as reporter of decisions.

- Washington Post