Stokes, Louis

Louis Stokes (1925–) is a criminal defense attorney best known for serving thirty years in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is important to Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, as he argued Terry v. Ohio (1968) before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the defendant John W. Terry.

Born in 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio, Stokes graduated from Case Western Reserve University in 1949 and then obtained a law degree from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1953. He then practiced law in Cleveland. He had a successful practice, including the oral advocacy before the High Court in Terry v. Ohio. Shortly after that case, he began serving in the U.S. Congress. He was the first African American congressman from Ohio to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

He continues to practice law, as senior counsel for the law firm Squire Sanders. His brother Carl was a former mayor of Cleveland, the first African American to be mayor of a major U.S. city, and his daughter Angela is a municipal judge in the Cleveland area.