James Clark McReynolds
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| James Clark McReynolds | |
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| In office October 12, 1914 – January 31, 1941 |
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| Nominated by | Woodrow Wilson |
| Preceded by | Horace Harmon Lurton |
| Succeeded by | James F. Byrnes |
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| Born | February 3, 1862 Elkton, Kentucky |
| Died | August 24, 1946 Washington, D.C. |
James Clark McReynolds (February 3, 1862–August 24, 1946) was an American lawyer and judge who served both as United States Attorney General under President Woodrow Wilson and as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
McReynolds served on the Court from October 12, 1914 to his retirement on January 31, 1941, and was known for his conservative opinions opposing President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislation.
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[edit] Early life
Born in Elkton, Kentucky, he graduated as valedictorian from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee in 1882 and attended the University of Virginia School of Law. He was secretary to Senator Howell Edmunds Jackson, who later became an associate justice himself. McReynolds practiced law in Nashville and served as Professor of Commercial Law, Insurance, & Corporations at Vanderbilt University Law School, and ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1886. Under Theodore Roosevelt he was Assistant Attorney General from 1903 to 1907, when he resigned to take up private practice in New York, New York.
[edit] Attorney General and Supreme Court tenure
In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson named him United States Attorney General and the next year appointed him to the Court. His opinions were terse and he did not often write dissents, considering it a waste of time.
His fierce opposition in the face of Franklin Roosevelt's legislation to fight the Great Depression led to him being labeled, one of the Four Horsemen, along with George Sutherland, Willis Van Devanter and Pierce Butler. McReynolds despised Roosevelt and never denied an attributed quote from him that stated, "I'll never resign (from the Court) as long as that crippled son-of-a-bitch is in the White House." [1]
McReynolds voted to strike down the Tennessee Valley Authority, the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Social Security Act and continued to vote against New Deal measures after the Court's 1937 "switch" to upholding New Deal legislation. With the death of Butler in 1939, McReynolds was the last of the Four Horsemen on the bench.
McReynolds is widely considered one of the most unpleasant men to ever sit on the Court, being labeled "Scrooge" by Drew Pearson. He would not accept "Jews, drinkers, blacks, women, smokers, married or engaged individuals as law clerks."[2] He was a blatant anti-Semite. Chief Justice William Howard Taft had to cancel the annual photograph of the justices in 1924 when McReynolds refused to sit next to Louis Brandeis (the first Jew on the Court), where he belonged on the basis of seniority.[2] McReynolds also refused to speak to Brandeis for three years following Brandeis's appointment and, when Brandeis retired in 1939, did not sign the customary dedicatory letter sent to justices on their retirement. During Benjamin Cardozo's swearing-in ceremony, McReynolds pointedly read a newspaper muttering "another one," and he did not attend Felix Frankfurter's, exclaiming "My God, another Jew on the Court!" According to John Frush Knox, McReynolds' law clerk in 1936-37 and the author of a memoir of his service, McReynolds never spoke to Cardozo at all. He was also a confirmed misogynist. His unpleasant manner towards Justice John Hessin Clarke is often blamed for Clarke's premature resignation from the Court in 1922. Taft said McReynolds "seems to delight in making others uncomfortable."
When the Supreme Court Building opened in 1935, McReynolds, like most of the other Justices, refused to move his office from his apartment into the new building but continued to work out of the office he maintained at his apartment.
However, McReynolds had a great love of children despite never marrying. As an example, he gave very generous assistance to thirty-three children who were victims of the German bombing of London in 1941 and left a sizable fortune to charity.
He resigned from the court in 1941 and lived in Washington, D.C., until his death there on August 24, 1946. He is buried in the Elkton Cemetery in Elkton, Kentucky.
[edit] Important cases
Justice McReynolds wrote two early decisions using the Fourteenth Amendment to protect civil liberties, they are Meyer v. Nebraska and Pierce v. Society of Sisters. He was also the author of the controversial United States v. Miller, which was the only Supreme Court case that directly involved the Second Amendment.
[edit] McReynolds in fiction
McReynolds is portrayed as head of the Confederate Supreme Court in Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 books. When McReynolds declares a popular bill by President Jake Featherston unconstitutional, Featherston abolishes the Court. The (former) Chief Justice went to the Confederate White House to chastise the Freedom Party leader, and is instead made to admit the legality (albeit with vague reasoning) of Featherston's action or else be "accidentally" murdered.
McReynolds also appears briefly in Kermit Roosevelt III's 2005 legal thriller "In The Shadow of the Law."
[edit] Bibliography
- Bond, James Edward, 1992. I dissent : the legacy of Chief [sic] Justice James Clark McReynolds. Lanham MD: George Mason University Press. Distributed by arrangement with University Pub. Associates. The designation "Chief Justice" in the title is an error.
- Knox, John, 1984, "A Personal Recollection of Justice Cardozo," Supreme Court Historical Society Quarterly 6.
- Knox, John, 2002. The forgotten memoir of John Knox : a year in the life of a Supreme Court clerk in FDR's Washington. University of Chicago Press. Knox (1907-1997) clerked under McReynolds.
[edit] References
- ^ Bending Before the Storm:The U.S. Supreme Court in Economic Crisis, 1935–1937, pg. 80, fn. 56
- ^ a b Henry J. Abraham. Justices, Presidents, and Senators: A History of the U.S. Supreme Court Appointments from Washington to Clinton, New and Revised Edition, Rowman & LIttlefield, 1999.
| Preceded by George W. Wickersham |
United States Attorney General 1913–1914 |
Succeeded by Thomas W. Gregory |
| Preceded by Horace Harmon Lurton |
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 1914 – 1941 |
Succeeded by James F. Byrnes |
| United States Attorneys General |  |
|---|---|
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