Harrison Tweed
Harrison Tweed | |
---|---|
Born | New York City, New York, U.S. | October 18, 1885
Died | June 16, 1969 | (aged 83)
Education | St. Mark's School |
Alma mater | Harvard College (B.A., 1907) Harvard Law School (LL.B., 1910) |
Occupation(s) | Lawyer, civic leader |
Spouses | Eleanor Roelker
(m. 1914; div. 1928)Blanche Oelrichs (m. 1929; div. 1942)Barbara Banning (m. 1942) |
Children | 3 |
Relatives | Tweed Roosevelt (grandson) William M. Evarts (maternal grandfather) |
Harrison Tweed (October 18, 1885 – June 16, 1969) was an American lawyer and civic leader.
Life and career
Tweed was born in
His career at the bar began with a clerkship in the office of Byrne and Cutcheon in New York City. After service as a
Tweed's appointment as chairman of the legal aid committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York in 1932, led to a continuing involvement in bar organizations. He became an enthusiastic convert to the necessity of providing competent legal services to all people. Legal aid, he wrote, was "operation equal justice," "an obligation of the bar," and essential to secure the success of the adversary system. He served as president of the
In 1945, Tweed was elected president of the
In 1947, Tweed became president of the American Law Institute (ALI). He was a guiding force in its major labors—the updating of the institute's published Restatements, as well as the preparation of the Uniform Commercial Code, model codes and statutes on penal law and taxation, and the first restatement on the foreign-relations law of the United States. He took a light, subtle approach, usually talking around the matter at hand so as to envelop the object of his attention; only occasionally did he take a direct part in the proceedings over which he smoothly presided.
Starting in 1947, Tweed was chairman of the ALI - American Bar Association (ABA) joint committee on continuing legal education. Refreshment of the law, Tweed believed, was a professional responsibility. He wrote articles, spoke to lawyers' groups, buttonholed bar leaders, and organized conferences. For many years, a colleague noted, he "was the committee." The number of administrators of state continuing-legal-education programs increased markedly during his tenure.
Educational matters and public service occupied much of Tweed's time. He served as a trustee of Sarah Lawrence College from 1940 to 1965, including eight years as chairman of the board of trustees (1947 to 1955), and was interim president of the college in 1959-1960. In his term as interim president, he is credited with saving the college from bankruptcy by increasing the number of students.[1] He also served as an overseer of Harvard University from 1950 to 1956, and from 1951 to 1967 he was a trustee of the Cooper Union Center for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City.
New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey in 1953 appointed him chairman of the state’s commission to study the reorganization of the judicial branch (courts); many of its recommendations, including the formation of a new judicial conference of the state's judges, were later adopted by the state. In 1963, at the request of US President John F. Kennedy, Tweed became co-chairman of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a position that he held for two years.
Tweed believed that lawyers' training to define complicated issues enabled them to play a special role outside the practice of law: "Even if he contributes nothing more than a sense of orderliness and an ability to organize thought and to pose the right questions, the lawyer will have pulled his weight in the boat." Of his year as president of Sarah Lawrence College, he wrote, "I think that I did manage to bring to the faculty an organization and an understanding of democratic procedures which no one but a lawyer could have done."
Tall, erect, and lean, Tweed was "the most democratic of aristocrats."He was the only lawyer to be awarded medals for distinguished service from the New York City, New York State, and American bar associations. The ABA tribute noted that his was "the Horatio Alger story in reverse." "I have a high opinion of lawyers," Tweed said in 1945. "With all their faults, they stack up well against those in every other occupation or profession. They are better to work with or play with or fight with or drink with than most other varieties of mankind." He died in New York City.
Family
Tweed was married three times and divorced twice. By his first marriage on June 14, 1914, to Eleanor Roelker, he had two children. Following his divorce in 1928, he married
His daughter (with Eleanor Roelker) Katharine Winthrop Tweed married Archibald Bulloch Roosevelt Jr. in 1940 and was divorced in 1950. She had one son, Tweed Roosevelt, born in 1942.
Further reading
Tweed's history of the Legal Aid Society was published as The Legal Aid Society, New York City, 1876-1951 (1954). See his chapter, "One Lawyer's Life," in Albert Love and James Saxon Childers, eds., Listen to Leaders in Law (1963). A series of interviews dealing largely with his law practice are in the Columbia Oral History Collection, Tributes to Tweed appear in the 1969 Association of the Bar of the City of New York Yearbook and the 1970 American Law Institute Proceedings. George Martin, Causes and Conflicts (1970), deals with Tweed's activities in the New York City bar association. An obituary is in the New York Times, June 17, 1969.]
References
- General
"Harrison Tweed, "Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 8: 1966-1970. American Council of Learned Societies, 1988. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2005. [1]
- Notes
- ^ Presidential Voices Archived 2009-02-07 at the Wayback Machine, Sarah Lawrence College website, accessed April 8, 2009