James Clark McReynolds

James Clark McReynolds (February 3, 1862 – August 24, 1946) was an American lawyer and judge from Tennessee who served as United States Attorney General under President Woodrow Wilson and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He served on the Court from 1914 to his retirement in 1941. McReynolds is best known today for his sustained opposition to the domestic programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and for his abrasive and dislikeable personality, which his contemporaries mostly viewed negatively and included documented elements of overt antisemitism and racism.

Born in Elkton, Kentucky, McReynolds practiced law in Tennessee after graduating from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as the U.S. Assistant Attorney General during President Theodore Roosevelt's administration and became well known for his skill in antitrust cases. After Wilson took office in 1913, he appointed McReynolds as his administration's first attorney general. Wilson nominated McReynolds to the Supreme Court in 1914 to fill the vacancy caused by Associate Justice Horace Harmon Lurton's death.

In his 26 years on the bench, McReynolds wrote 506 majority opinions for the Court and 157 dissents, 93 of which were against the New Deal. He was part of the "Four Horsemen" bloc of conservative justices who frequently voted to strike down New Deal programs. He assumed senior status in 1941 and was succeeded by James F. Byrnes. During his Supreme Court tenure, McReynolds wrote the majority opinion in cases such as Meyer v. Nebraska, United States v. Miller, Adams v. Tanner, and Pierce v. Society of Sisters. Due to his temperament, bigotry, and his opposition to the domestic programs of the FDR administration, McReynolds is sometimes included on lists of the worst Supreme Court justices by progressive-leaning thinkers.

Early life

Born in Elkton, Kentucky, the county seat of Todd County, McReynolds was the son of John Oliver and Ellen (née Reeves) McReynolds, both members of the Disciples of Christ church. The house where James Clark McReynolds was born still stands; it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. He graduated from the prestigious Green River Academy and later matriculated at Vanderbilt University, graduating with status one year later as a valedictorian in 1882. At the University of Virginia School of Law, where he studied under John B. Minor, "a man of stern morality and firm conservative convictions", McReynolds completed his studies in 14 months. He again graduated at the head of his class, He practiced law in Nashville and served for three years as an adjunct professor of commercial law, insurance, and corporations at Vanderbilt University Law School.

McReynolds became active in politics, running unsuccessfully for Congress in 1896 as a "Goldbug" Democrat. As head of the Tennessee delegation to the 1896 Democratic National Convention, he wrote the party's "sound money" plank. In recognition of his "trust busting" credentials, Wilson appointed McReynolds as the 48th United States Attorney General on March 15, 1913, and he served until his accession to the Supreme Court the following August. to succeed Horace H. Lurton. The United States Senate confirmed him on August 29, by a 44–6 vote, and he was sworn into office on October 12.

Important opinions

In his 27 years on the bench, McReynolds wrote 506 decisions, an average of just under 19 opinions for each term of the Court during his tenure. In addition, he authored 157 dissents, 93 of which were against the New Deal.

McReynolds's fierce opposition to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal legislation designed to provide relief to citizens and put people to work, but which greatly expanded the scope of the federal government during the Great Depression, resulted in his being classified as one of the "Four Horsemen", along with George Sutherland, Willis Van Devanter and Pierce Butler.

As a confirmed opponent of federal authority aimed toward social ends or economic regulation, McReynolds had the "single-minded passion of a zealot".

Supreme Court's official portrait of James Clark McReynolds, ca 1941McReynolds wrote two early decisions using the Fourteenth Amendment to protect civil liberties: Meyer v. Nebraska, , and Pierce v. Society of Sisters. Meyer involved a state law that prohibited the teaching of modern foreign languages in public schools. Meyer, who taught German in a Lutheran school, was convicted under this law. In overturning the conviction on substantive due process grounds, McReynolds wrote that the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment included an individual's right "to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, to establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience, and generally to enjoy privileges, essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men". These two decisions survived the post-Lochner era.

Pierce involved a challenge to a law forbidding parents to send their children to any but public schools. McReynolds wrote the opinion for a unanimous Court, holding that the Act violated the liberty of parents to direct the education of their children: "the fundamental liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only". These decisions were revived long after McReynolds left the bench, to buttress the Court's announcement of a constitutional right to privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut, , and later the constitutional right to abortion in Roe v. Wade.

McReynolds wrote the decision in United States v. Miller, , the only Supreme Court case directly involving the Second Amendment until District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008. Chief Justice William Howard Taft thought him selfish, prejudiced and mean: "e has a continual grouch, and is always offended because the court is doing something that he regards as undignified." Taft also wrote that McReynolds was the most irresponsible member of the Court, and that "n the absence of McReynolds everything went smoothly."

Early on, his temperament affected his performance in the court. Clarke decided to resign early from the court, and said that McReynolds's open antipathy was a factor. McReynolds refused to sign the customary joint memorial letter for Clarke, which was always given to departing members. In a letter, Taft commented that "his is a fair sample of McReynolds's personal character and the difficulty of getting along with him."

Taft wrote that although he considered McReynolds an "able man", he found him to be "selfish to the last degree ... fuller of prejudice than any man I have ever known ... one who delights in making others uncomfortable. He has no sense of duty ... really seems to have less of a loyal spirit to the Court than anybody." In 1929, McReynolds asked Taft to announce opinions assigned to him (McReynolds), explaining that "an imperious voice has called me out of town. I don't think my sudden illness will prove fatal, but strange things some time [sic] happen around Thanksgiving." Duck hunting season had opened and McReynolds was off to Maryland for some shooting. In 1925, he left so suddenly on a similar errand that he had no opportunity to notify the Chief Justice of his departure. Taft was infuriated as two important decisions he wanted to deliver were delayed, because McReynolds had not handed in a dissent before leaving.

McReynolds went on tirades about "un-Americans" and "political subversives." |group=upper-alpha he would not accept "Jews, drinkers, blacks, women, smokers, married or engaged individuals" as law clerks. Time "called him 'Puritanical', 'intolerably rude', 'savagely sarcastic', 'incredibly reactionary', and 'anti-Semitic. McReynolds refused to speak to Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish member of the Court, for the first three years of Brandeis's tenure. When Brandeis retired in 1939, McReynolds again did not sign the dedicatory letter. He habitually left the conference room whenever Brandeis spoke. When news of Cardozo's appointment was announced, McReynolds is claimed to have said "Huh, it seems that the only way you can get on the Supreme Court these days is to be either the son of a criminal or a Jew, or both." During Cardozo's swearing-in ceremony, McReynolds pointedly read a newspaper. He often held a brief or record in front of his face when Cardozo delivered an opinion from the bench. Likewise, he refused to sign opinions authored by Brandeis. (On the other hand, the report that he did not attend Felix Frankfurter's swearing-in—with regard to which he is reported to have exclaimed, "My God, another Jew on the Court!" —was refuted by Supreme Court historian Franz Jantzen, as cited by T. C. Peppers in the Richmond Public Interest Law Review. However, the oft-repeated story that McReynolds refused to sit for the 1924 Court photograph because of his hostility to Brandeis is untrue. McReynolds objected to taking a new photograph when there had been no change in the membership of the court since the 1923 photograph. Alpheus T. Mason misinterpreted this as hostility to Brandeis, but McReynolds sat for numerous photographs for which Brandeis (and later Felix Frankfurter) was present.

Once, when colleague Harlan Fiske Stone remarked to him of an attorney's brief: "That was the dullest argument I ever heard in my life", McReynolds replied: "The only duller thing I can think of is to hear you read one of your opinions." McReynolds's long-suffering African-American domestic servants—subject to his racism—gave him the nickname "Pussywillow".

As a Justice, McReynolds held privileges at the Chevy Chase golf club. Justices Pierce Butler and Willis Van Devanter transferred from the club to Burning Tree because McReynolds "got disagreeable even beyond their endurance". Once when called before the chairman of the Golf Committee to answer complaints filed against him, McReynolds said, "I've been a member of this club a good many years, and no one around here has ever shown me any courtesy, so I don't intend to show any to anyone else." The indignant chairman replied: "Mr. Justice, you wouldn't be a member of this club if it wasn't for your official position. The members of this club have put up with your discourtesy for years, merely because you are a member of the Supreme Court. But I'm telling you now that the next time there is a complaint against you, you'll be suspended from the privileges of the golf course."

When a woman lawyer appeared in the courtroom, McReynolds reportedly muttered: "I see the female is here again." He often left the bench when a woman lawyer rose to present a case. He announced to any justice who attempted to smoke in conference that "tobacco smoke is personally objectionable to me". Any who tried "were stopped at the threshold".

But McReynolds was reportedly "extremely charitable" to the pages who worked at the Court, Once, when riding to his office on a street car, a drunk got on board and fell out in the aisle. McReynolds picked him up, helped him back to his seat, and sat beside him until they reached the top of Capitol Hill, leaving him only after giving explicit instructions to the conductor. When he was required to preside in court, due to absence of more senior justices, "he was the soul of courtesy, graciously greeting and raptly listening to the arguments by lawyers of both sexes."

Retirement After a substantial hearing loss in 1925, McReynolds strongly intended to resign from the Court, and was dissuaded only by requests by many friends, who called him "one of the few who have courageously stood for the rights of property and of the citizen." McReynolds ultimately retired on January 31, 1941, and assumed senior status. He lived at the Rochambeau apartment complex in Washington, D.C. from 1915 until President Roosevelt requisitioned the building in 1935 for his New Deal requirements. McReynolds found a new apartment at 2400 Sixteenth Street. After the deaths of John Hessin Clarke and Harlan F. Stone in 1945 and 1946 respectively, he was the last surviving member of the Taft Court.

Death and legacy McReynolds never married.

Knox wrote "in 1946 he [McReynolds] died a very lonely death in a hospital – without a single friend or relative at his bedside." He was buried in Kentucky, but no member of the Court attended his funeral. In contrast, as the clerk noted, when McReynolds's African-American messenger, Harry Parker, died in 1953, his funeral was attended by five or six justices, including the chief justice. McReynolds's brother, Robert, visited him in the hospital shortly before his death. In his will, McReynolds wrote, "let there be no service in Washington". The U.S. Marshal for the Supreme Court traveled to Elkton for the funeral. The Christian Science Monitor hailed McReynolds in tribute as "the last and lone champion on the Supreme Bench battling the steady encroachment of Federal powers on State and individual rights ... standing these later years at the Pass of Thermopylae".

McReynolds bequeathed his entire estate to charity.

Papers McReynolds's papers are held at many libraries around the country, mainly at the University of Virginia Law School; Harvard University Law School, Felix Frankfurter papers; John Knox papers (1920–80), available at the University of Virginia and Northwestern University; University of Kentucky at Lexington, Kentucky, William Jennings Price (1851–1952) papers; University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library, Frank Murphy papers; Minnesota Historical Society, Pierce Butler papers; Tennessee State Library and Archives, Robert Boyte Crawford Howell papers; University of Virginia, Homer Stille Cummings papers.