Nathan Greene

Nathan Greene, also known as "Nuddy" Greene (ca. 1902–1964), was an American lawyer and legal scholar. He cofounded the International Juridical Association and cowrote The Labor Injunction with his professor and future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. The book criticized the U.S. Supreme Court for creating "government by injunction".

Background

Nathan Greene was born in Brooklyn, New York, circa 1902. He attended City College of New York and then graduated with an LLB jurisprudence in 1925 from Harvard Law, where he was a "Frankfurter favorite."

Career

In 1930, Greene co-authored the book Labor Injunction with Frankfurter, well received at the time as "at once scholarly and interesting... Mechanically the book is perfect" and also "comprehensive."

Practice

According to The New York Times (but without specifying when, for whom, or in what capacity), Greene "advised many members of the New Deal Administration on labor legislation." (Louis M. Loeb was a prominent partner in that period.)

In the 1950s, he served as special counsel to Lazard Freres & Co. and joined the Development and Resources Corporation or "D&R," founded in 1955 by David E. Lilienthal. (Lilienthal, leader of the Tennessee Valley Authority or "TVA," also worked for Lazard Freres and then formed D&R as an engineering and consulting firm which shared some TVA objectives, i.e., in supporting major public power and public works projects for overseas clients, including: Iran, Colombia, Ghana, India, Italy, Morocco, Nigeria, South Vietnam, and Venezuela.) Of the Bulletin, Greene commented said that the editor tried "to understand the day-by-day and month-by-month movements in freedom's ride and to convey this understanding to others."

In 1945, King had Greene write the brief for Bridges v. Wixon. In essence, the King-Greene case theory argued that a denial of due process occurred because the government had already litigated the case (via the Landis decision), thereby resulting in a form of double jeopardy. In addition, the law due process was violated since Congress had passed the law under which he was prosecuted after Bridges' earlier legal victories. The article was "a learned and effective plea against the use of injunctions to curb the self-help methods of organized labor and in favor of the then pending Norris-LaGuardia Act." Rather than withhold withhold from remedy for the wrongs, Greene and Frankfurter argued as follows:

No such interpretation is possible for the proposed bill, which explicitly applies only to the authority of United States courts 'to issue any restraining order or injunction.' All other remedies in federal courts and all remedies in state courts remain available. "Congressional Power Over the Labor Injunction" (New York: Columbia Law Review, 1931) The Labor Injunction (New York: P. Smith, 1963) (repreint)

By himself: Civil Liberties and the NLRB (New York: International Juridical Association / National Comm for People's Rights, 1940)

Articles: Editing of issues of the International Juridical Association Bulletin from 1932 to 1940