Selected Papers of Homer Cummings, Attorney General of the United States, 1933-1939
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. xxvi, 316 pages. Frontis illustration. Footnotes. Appendix: Politics and Humanity. Index. DJ has some wear, soiling, edge tears/chips. Name of Ben V. Cohen stamped inside front cover. Homer Stille Cummings (April 30, 1870 – September 10, 1956) was a U.S. lawyer and political figure who was United States Attorney General from 1933 to 1939. He also was elected mayor of Stamford, Connecticut, three times before founding the legal firm of Cummings & Lockwood in 1909. He later served as chairman of Democratic National Committee between 1919 and 1920. Cummings reentered politics. In 1932, he helped persuade 24 senators and numerous congressmen to announce their support for Franklin D. Roosevelt. At the Chicago convention, he planned strategy, operated as floor manager, and delivered a resounding seconding speech. Following the election, Roosevelt chose Cummings as governor-general of the Philippines. Two days before the inauguration, Thomas J. Walsh, who had been designated attorney general, died. Upon taking office on March 4, 1933, Roosevelt named Cummings to lead the Justice Department. Cummings served almost six years as attorney general. Cummings transformed the Department of Justice by establishing uniform rules of practice and procedure in federal courts. He secured the passage of twelve laws that buttressed the "Lindbergh Law" on kidnapping, made bank robbery a federal crime and cracked down on interstate transportation of stolen property. Carl Brent Swisher, after obtaining his doctoral degree in political science at the Brookings Institute and teaching for five years at Columbia University, Dr. Swisher served as a Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States from 1935 to 1937. This experience was invaluable in his role as Editor of the Selected Papers of Attorney General Homer Cummings. He was a co-author of a valuable history of the development of the Department of Justice. He taught constitutional history for many years at Johns Hopkins University. He was a pioneer in the field of judicial biography. Swisher published several general studies of constitutional law and the Supreme Court, including American Constitutional Development (1943; rev. ed. with e. m. sait, 1954) and The Supreme Court in Modern Role (1958; rev. ed., 1965). In the most influential of these works, The Growth of Constitutional Power in the United States (1946; rev. ed., 1963), Swisher questioned the continuing usefulness of the doctrine of separation of powers, fearing that it prevented government from achieving the ends which society increasingly expected government to achieve; he also urged government supervision of large corporations to check their political and economic power.
Benjamin Victor Cohen (September 23, 1894 – 1983), a member of the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, had a public service career that spanned from the early New Deal through and beyond the Vietnam War era. Cohen was a law clerk for Judge Learned Hand. He served as counsel for the American Zionist Movement from 1919 - 1921, during which he acted as Zionist counsel to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Cohen practiced law in New York 1921 - 1933. Cohen's first appearance on the national scene was as a member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Brain Trust. Cohen became a part of the Roosevelt administration in 1933 when Felix Frankfurter, then a Harvard Law School professor, brought Cohen, Thomas Corcoran, and James M. Landis together to write what became the Truth In Securities Act. Later that year Cohen was assigned to work on railroad legislation. Much of Cohen's work during the New Deal was in conjunction with Corcoran. Together they were known as the "Gold Dust Twins" and appeared on the cover of Time magazine's September 12, 1938, edition. In 1941, during the period leading up to the entry of the United States into World War II he helped write the Lend-Lease plan. Cohen also assisted in the drafting of the 1944 Dumbarton Oaks agreements leading to the establishment of the United Nations. In 1945 Cohen served as the United States' chief draftsman at the Potsdam Conference. In 1942, The New York Times published a letter by Cohen and co-author Erwin Griswold decrying the United States Supreme Court's Betts v. Brady ruling that poor criminal defendants had no right to an attorney. Two decades later the issue again came before the Supreme Court in the Gideon v. Wainwright case. The attorneys for Gideon, the person accused of a crime, concluded their brief to the Supreme Court with a lengthy quotation from the Cohen/Griswold letter. This time the Supreme Court ruled that the government must appoint attorneys for criminal defendants who cannot afford an attorney. In 1948 Cohen advised both the United States and the new State of Israel with respect to the first official exchange between those two countries. Cohen provided crucial advice and counsel to senators working for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. In 1967 Cohen testified in favor of a proposed United States Senate resolution that would have called upon President Johnson to request the United Nations consider proposals to end the Vietnam War. Condition: Very good / Good.
Keywords: Homer Cummings, Attorney General, Legal, New Deal, Franklin Roosevelt, Crime, U.S. Constitution, Department of Justice, Alcatraz, Gun Control, Law Enforcement, Judicial Reform, Criminal Law, FBI, Bureau of Investigation
[Book #80939]
Price: $150.00