Hand graduated from Murphy High School, then served from 1943 to 1946 in the United States Army as a combat infantry rifleman during World War II.
Hand supported the Republican Party by 1962, in particular James D. Martin of Gadsden for the United States Senate against the veteran Democrat J. Lister Hill of Montgomery.
Desegregation of schools in Alabama, including Mobile, had been the subject of controversy since the United States Supreme Court's decisions in Brown v. Board of Education in 1955, but the legal case was first filed in 1963 by the NAACP Legal Defense fund on behalf of Birdie Mae Davis, and other parents organized by John LeFlore, the head of the local NAACP and who died shortly after being elected to the Alabama House of Representatives in 1971.
[7] In a prayer breakfast speech commemorating Law Day in Anniston, Alabama in 1986, Hand condemned spreading immorality in society, which he blamed on a human-centered worldview.
In his 172-page ruling, later republished as a book with a foreword by Richard John Neuhaus[9] Judge Hand ordered the removal of forty-four texts across the state in subjects such as history and social studies.
"[12] Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court disagreed with Hand's assessment, finding Alabama's silent school prayer law unconstitutional in Wallace v. Jaffree (1985).