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It might be hard to take a judge named "Barefoot" seriously.
But it wasn't, for the thousands of Texans who knew and admired former federal judge, Harold Barefoot Sanders.
Sanders died on Sunday at his home at the age of 83.
He was a man who treated big people and little people with the same dignity.
If justice has a ghost, it is Barefoot Sanders.
Sanders was appointed a U.S. attorney by John Kennedy in 1961.
As an assistant U.S. attorney general under Lyndon Johnson, he helped pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
One of the pens Lyndon Johnson used to sign the law was one of Sanders' treasured possessions.
"Because of where he came form, working through the sixties and being the U.S. attorney during the Kennedy assassination, he was especially steeped in the civil rights movement and he had a burning desire I think, to see that carried out through his lifetime," said Jane Boyle, a federal judge.
President Jimmy Carter appointed him a federal judge in 1979.
A few years later, he began overseeing a desegregation plan for the Dallas Independent School which lasted until 2003.
As a judge, chief judge and elder legal statesman, he set a clear tone.
"He was remembered for his sense of humor, his decency, his sometimes lack of patience with lawyers who he thought were wasting the court's time," remembered one colleague.
At the same time, he didn't take himself seriously. A dog lover, a plaster canine adorned his office. As a joke, his colleagues once staged a mock court, with dogs as the litigators.
"He cared about people. He didn't care if you were powerful or without power. He cared about you as a person and he was genuinely interested in you," said another colleague.
Colleagues say, at his core, it was justice that drove him.
Once, when a juror didn't show up for court, he made her copy the constitution by hand.
A lesson still remembered by many, who won't forget the judge who made her do it.
