page_title: George MacKinnon
section_title: Philosophy
hierarchical_section_title: George MacKinnon / Philosophy
caption_attribution_description: English: MACKINNON, GEORGE EDWARD, a Representative from Minnesota; born in St. Paul, Ramsey County, Minn., April 22, 1906; attended the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo., 1923-1924; L.L.B., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn., 1929; lawyer, private practice; member of the Minnesota state house of representatives, 1935-1942; United States Navy, 1942-1946; elected as a Republican to the Eightieth Congress (January 3, 1947-January 3, 1949); unsuccessful candidate for reelection to the Eighty-first Congress in 1948; United States attorney for the district of Minnesota, 1953-1958; unsuccessful candidate for governor of Minnesota in 1958; special assistant, United States Department of Justice, 1960-1961; judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, 1969-1995; presiding judge, United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, 1979-1982; member, United States Sentencing Commission, 1985-1991; died on May 1, 1995, in Potomac, Md.; interment in Union Cemetery, Long Lake, Minn.
context_page_description: George Edward MacKinnon was an American politician, attorney, and judge who variously served as a United States Representative and United States Attorney for Minnesota, and as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. He is also the father of feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon.
context_section_description: MacKinnon was also known as a conservative and once described as "so far right he makes Goldwater look like George McGovern," although this may have been hyperbole. According to Judge Harry T. Edwards, Judge MacKinnon was "a real character: he was someone who was not easily dissuaded from his positions, who always aimed to get his way, and, yet, who always enjoyed his colleagues and fostered collegiality on the court." Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, a fellow Minnesotan who appointed MacKinnon to the United States Sentencing Commission and the special court division that selected independent counsel, said, "He's a man who can't be frightened or pushed by anybody" when describing him. Thomas J. Campbell, who once worked as a clerk for Judge MacKinnon, has written:
  Judge MacKinnon inspired by words. He inspired by his life's deeds. But he inspired most of all by what came to him, naturally. That he'd always introduce himself as George, not Judge. That he would call his wife on his private phone line, so that the government would not have to pay whatever marginal cost one phone call might represent. That he would answer his own phone with such alacrity that clerk or secretary would have to scramble to pick it up on the first ring. That he presided at the marriage, in chambers, of a man he had once prosecuted, convicted, and sent away to prison as U.S. Attorney. That he was loved by Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and sought the approval of neither to find his own sense of worth.
caption: MacKinnon as a U.S. Representative
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