James Clark McReynolds
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James Clark McReynolds (February 3, 1862–August 24, 1946) was United States Attorney General under President Woodrow Wilson, who appointed McReynolds 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 in opposing to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislation.
Born at Elkton, Kentucky, he was graduated as valedictorian from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee in 1882 and attended the University of Virginia law school. 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. He 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.
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." [Bending Before the Storm:The U.S. Supreme Court in Economic Crisis, 1935–1937], pg. 80, fn. 56
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." He was a blatant anti-Semite and refused to sit near Louis Brandeis (the first Jew to sit on the Court) where he belonged on the basis of seniority for the Court's annual picture to be taken in 1924; Chief Justice William Howard Taft decided that no Court picture would be taken that year. McReynolds refused to speak to Brandeis for three years following his appointment and when Brandeis retired in 1939, did not sign the customary dedicatory letter sent to Court members on their retirement. During Benjamin Cardozo's swearing in ceremony he pointedly read a newspaper muttering "another one", and did not attend Felix Frankfurter's, exclaiming "My God, another Jew on the Court!" According to John Knox (see Bibliography), 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 retirement from the Court in 1922. Taft said McReynolds "seems to delight in making others uncomfortable."
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 sizeable fortune to charity. When the Supreme Court Building opened, McReynolds refused to move his office from his apartment into the new building.
He resigned from the court in 1941 and lived in Washington, D.C. until his death there August 24, 1946. He is buried in the Elkton Cemetery, Elkton, Kentucky.
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 through a legal loophole. 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."
Bibiliography
John Knox (1907-1997), his law clerk for one year in the 1930's, wrote a fascinating memoir of his experience only published after its author's death: The forgotten memoir of John Knox : a year in the life of a Supreme Court clerk in FDR's Washington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). A monograph on the Justice--but which incorrectly labels him Chief Justice in the title--is I dissent : the legacy of Chief Justice James Clark McReynolds by James Edward Bond (1943- ) (Fairfax, Va. : George Mason University Press ; Lanham, MD : Distributed by arrangement with University Pub. Associates, 1992).
- John Knox, "A Personal Recollection of Justice Cardozo," 6 Supreme Court Historical Society Quarterly (Fall 1984).
References
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