The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-02-15

AAA <AAuCAAN0A 00A <A6DVCA0S
 tion's Side.
 Washington, Feb. 15-Robert H. Jackson suddenly has become a SousEe of acute pain and consider able alarm among the so-called lead- CTS of the legal profession. whose conceptions of the Constitution and t"e supreme court pattern after those of the American Liberty League.
 Jackson is the lawyer who recent ly was made head of the antitrust division of the department of jus tice-a fact which doesn't aSsuage any fears. And the news Is getting around that he also is an important but urobtrusive member of the in- ner circle of presidential advisers.
 Worst and immediately to the point, Jackson has just warned
 his legal brethren that if they
 keep on cluttering up the path of
 national progress, they may lose
 their all-important monopoly on
 the supreme court through ap- pOintment of laymen to the court by some radical administra-
 tion."
 That was part of speech at the annual dinner of the New York Bar association, in which he took the hide of the American Bar associa- ton and its dominating legal phil- osophy with perhaps more force and finesse than had ever before been applied to the job.
 Launch Revolt
 The attack was a symbolic phase of a widespread revolt against the "reactionary" A. B. A. The revolt head sup in the National Lawyers Guild, of which Jackson and many other New Deal lawyers are mem bers.
 Delegates representing more
 than 1000 liberal" lawyers, in-
 cludipg senators, governors, and
 judges, will meet in Washington
 this month to organize formally,
 attack the "bourbonism" of the
 A. B. A.. and esp0use the Brandeis
 conception of lawyers as public
 servitors rather than mere hired mercenaries.
 Frank P. Walsh is national pres- ident of the N. L. G., and Henry T. Hunt, special legal adviser to the secretary of the interior, is national vice-president and head of the Washington chapter.
 Tried Andy Mellon Much more will be heard of Jack son. He was an outstanding trial lawyer in Buffalo. N. Y, and lead- CT in upstate democratic politics who is being promoted in certain infiu- ential places to succeed Herbert Lehman as governor of New York. As general counsel for the bureau of internal revenue, he devised the intercorporate dividend tax. and tried the big tax case against An- drew w. Mellon.
 He was made a special assistant to the SEC to try the Electric Bond and Share case involving the hold. ing company act, and was head of the D. Us taxation section under Attorney General Cummings be. fore being assigned to antitrust cases.
 He has joined up with the cele- brated legal brain trust team of Ben Cohen and Thomas G. Corcoran which has dIafter large share of New Deal legislation. . Servant or Nuisance? we lawyers have produced a paralyzing complexity of government that illustrates democratic control" Jackson declared. The most subtle subverter of free government is a baffling complexity.
 "It seemed last fall that the Ain- erican Bar association identified it. self pretty thoroughly with Maine and Vermont. {. Is our profession a public servant or public nt .isance?. Some think society would do well to blow under the worst of US. Others think the worst of US do less harm to society than the best of us. Our sincerity Is al- ways under cloud. There is a cruel realism about the underworld which calls any lawyer, even its own. a 'mouthpiece.'
 "No other people have submitted to generally to lawyer leadership. We have held all the judicial and m ny of the legislative and execu- tive offices."