‘Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly with God.’
2/4/2026On Friday night, Sept. 4, 2009, just before the baseball game between the Iowa Cubs and the Albuquerque Isotopes was scheduled to start, Federal Judge Robert Pratt stepped to the microphone set up near home plate at Principal Park. He was fully robed.
A court official had just announced that a special session of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa was in session.
Not everyone knew what was going on, and many of the thousands of fans kept drinking their beers, eating their hotdogs and chatting with their neighbors as the judge started to speak. But Judge Pratt was not speaking mainly to the fans. He was addressing 34 men and women lined up along the base path between home plate and third base. They were from 15 countries, and the judge was swearing them in as citizens of the United States.
As the judge started to speak, the crowd was noisy, but it grew quieter and quieter as he told those 34 men and women that while they are renouncing their allegiance to the government of another land “you did not renounce nor should you ever renounce the devotion you carry in your heart for the people of your native land. Preserve that always.…For over 200 years, this country has been blessed with a constant infusion of new people from all over the world who brought their languages, their heritages and their cultural values with them. Today it is you who so bless us. We are a nation made strong by people like you who traveled long distances, overcame great obstacles, and made tremendous sacrifices all to provide a better life for themselves and their families;”
He noted that “as George Washington said, ‘the bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respected stranger but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions.’
“Now,” Judge Pratt said, “I wish to speak to you as United States citizens, which you now are.”
He paused, and the crowd got quieter.
“You may hear voices in this land say that there is only one true American religion,” he began. “Do not believe it. As an American, you may freely and openly be a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim, or you may adjure to any other religion, or you may be an agnostic or an atheist.
“You may hear voices in this land say that there is only one true American way to think and believe about political matters, economic matters, and social matters. Do not believe it. As an American, you may freely and openly adhere to political, economic and social views on the right, on the left, or anywhere in between.
“You may hear voices in this land say that there is only one true American set of values. Do not believe it. As an American, you may openly hold beliefs and values greatly different from those of others — even if those of others are shared by many and yours are shared by few.
“Simply stated, there is no single American way to think or believe. Indeed, conformity of thought and belief would be contrary to the underlining principles of this great nation.”
By now the crowd was hushed — and then it began to cheer as he talked about American freedoms. Ballplayers, some from foreign lands themselves, had drifted out of the bullpens and locker rooms to listen. At the end of the talk, there was a standing ovation — I believe it was for the judge as well as the new citizens.
The swearing-in was Pratt’s idea. He had raised the issue over lunch earlier that year — at the time, I was the principal owner of the Iowa Cubs — and I think it marked the first time such a ceremony was held before a professional baseball game. As he left the field, we looked at each other and said, “Next year, July 4.”
And so it was — on the next Fourth, and for a dozen years more the Judge performed the same ceremony at a game over the July 4 holiday. All told, he swore in 421 citizens. (After Pratt retired from full-time judging, Judge Steve Locher has continued the tradition.)
Judge Pratt had been speaking from his heart. For all his life — as a student at Loras College and Creighton Law School, as a lawyer who spent a quarter of a century helping the underprivileged and overburdened, and finally as a judge — he championed the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
“He understands the frailties of human nature,” former Sen. Tom Harkin said a few years ago in explaining why he picked Pratt for an opening on the federal bench in 1997. They had known each other since both were young Legal Aid lawyers in Des Moines. They had remained close after Harkin went into politics and Pratt into private practice.
Bob Pratt was born on a 40-acre farm on the edge of Estherville on May 3, 1947 — “two weeks before Jackie Robinson broke into the major leagues,” he noted one day over lunch.
(He was a lifelong fan and, over lunch, could regularly come up with obscure statistics about obscure players, bizarre stories about bizarre players, and graphic descriptions of plays he had seen over the years. He was a season-ticket holder at the Iowa Cubs and loved going to spring training.)
He grew up with a brother and two sisters in a household where books were plentiful but money was not. His mother was a graduate of Iowa State University and worked for the ISU Extension Service. His father didn’t graduate from high school and worked the farm.
It was a time of great change in America. When Pratt was 13, John F. Kennedy was elected President, the Civil Rights movement was building, and political assassinations were soon to be headline news. Watching the news and listening to his mother, he became a committed Democrat — a commitment strengthened at Loras College and particularly after he met Clarke College student Rose Mary Vito, a pretty girl from the south side of Des Moines, where Italian and Democrat were synonymous.
He was active until he became a judge, where the rules barred him from public politics. It was a harsh rule for him. “I was a social person and a political person,” he said. “And being a judge is a lonely life.” He had to get his political fix through his wife, Rose Mary, who continued her activism.
But sometimes he couldn’t help himself. After President Trump pardoned two men who were convicted in a case related to a case Pratt had handled, he off-handedly told a reporter that “it’s not surprising that a criminal like Trump pardons other criminals. But apparently to get a pardon one has to be either a Republican, a convicted child murderer or a turkey.”
The reporter printed the quote. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals chastised Pratt, and he apologized.
In the related corruption case, Pratt had sentenced an Iowa legislator to prison even though prosecutors had recommended probation. “There is no corruption worse than political corruption,” he explained to a friend.
As a judge, he was widely respected for his intellect and his compassion — and his values. In key rulings, he expanded the right to abortion in Iowa, he struck down as unconstitutional a close tie between the Iowa prison system and a religious group, and, perhaps most important, he ruled that judges had wide discretion in sentencing despite rigid guidelines set by Congress. That decision was upheld by the United States Supreme Court.
Robert William Pratt died of a heart attack while working out at a gym on Wednesday, Jan. 28. His remains were buried on Feb. 3 at Glendale Cemetery, near a simple bench he and his wife had installed a few years ago.
“Do justice,” it says on the bench. “Love mercy. Walk humbly with
God.” ♦
Michael Gartner was born and raised in Des Moines. Along the way, he has been a top editor at The Wall Street Journal, editor and president of The Des Moines Register, president of NBC News, majority owner of the Iowa Cubs and co-owner of CITYVIEW. In 1997, he won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing while at the Ames Tribune, where he was editor and co-owner.
