Thurman Arnold
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Thurman Arnold (June 2, 1891 – November 7, 1969) was the iconoclastic Washington, D.C. lawyer best known for his trust-busting campaign as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Department of Justice. He launched numerous studies but had no major successes by the time World War II came and anti-trust was deemphasized so corporations could concentrate on winning the war.
Before coming to Washington in 1938, Arnold was a professor at Yale Law School, where he took part in the legal realism movement, and published two books: The Symbols of Government (1935) and The Folklore of Capitalism (1937). A few years later, he published The Bottlenecks of Business (1940).
In 1943, Arnold was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He was never happy on the court, leaving after only two years on the bench. As an explanation of his decision, he told observers he "would rather be speaking to damn fools than listening to damn fools." He returned to private practice where, along with Paul Porter and Abe Fortas, he co-founded the firm known today as Arnold & Porter.
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[edit] Personal
Thurman was born in the ranch town of Laramie, Wyoming. He began his university studies at Wabash College, but transferred to and graduated from Princeton. He earned his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1914. He served in World War I, and worked briefly in Chicago before returning to Laramie, where he was mayor from 1923-1924.
Thurman married his lifelong partner Frances Longan Arnold on September 4, 1917. They had two children, Thurman Jr. and George, both of whom enjoyed successful careers in the law. George married and raised a family with Elen Pearson, daughter of columnist Drew Pearson and granddaughter of Cissy Patterson, owner the Washington Times-Herald.
[edit] Bibliography
- Gene M. Gressley. "Thurman Arnold, Antitrust, and the New Deal, " The Business History Review, Vol. 38, No. 2, (Summer, 1964), pp. 214-231 online at JSTOR
- Wilson D. Miscamble, "Thurman Arnold Goes to Washington: A Look at Antitrust Policy in the Later New Deal," The Business History Review, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Spring, 1982), pp. 1-15 online at JSTOR
- Spencer Weber Waller. Thurman Arnold: A Biography. (2005) ISBN 0-8147-9392-4
[edit] Primary sources
- Arnold, Thurman. The Bottlenecks of Business. ISBN 1-58798-085-1
- Arnold, Thurman. The Folklore of Capitalism. ISBN 1-58798-025-8
- Arnold, Thurman. The Symbols of Government.
- Arnold, Thurman. Voltaire and the Cowboy: The Letters of Thurman Arnold . ISBN 0-87081-073-1
