Walter Nelles

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Walter Nelles (April 21, 1883 – April 1, 1937) was an American

civil rights and constitutional law cases in later years.[1]

Background

Walter Nelles was born April 21, 1883, in Leavenworth, Kansas, the son of George Thomas Nelles, a civil engineer.[2] Nelles attended the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, in preparation for an Ivy League collegiate education.[2] Upon graduation from Exeter, Nelles enrolled in Harvard University, from which he graduated in 1905 with a Bachelor's degree.[2]

After graduation, Nelles taught as an instructor at the

LL.B. in 1911.[2] During the period of his graduate education, Nelles also taught as an instructor at Lowell Institute and Radcliffe College.[2]

Career

After passing the bar examination, Nelles entered private legal practice.

Law practice

During World War I, Nelles was a partner in the law firm of Hale, Nelles & Shorr.

Nelles defended Communist Party co-founder

incorporated, which protected fundamental provisions of the Bill of Rights, including the freedom of speech. (New York State Governor Al Smith commuted Gitlow's sentence.)[6]

Throughout the 1920s, Nelles participated in a loose partnership of left-wing attorneys, including Joseph R. Brodsky, Swinburne Hale, Carol Weiss King, and Isaac Shorr.[7] The firm support legal investigations published in the 67-page Report upon the Illegal Practices of the United States Department of Justice by the National Popular Government League (NGPL); Swinburne Hale did a majority of the work on the report.[8]

In 1920, Nelles served on the defense team of the five

Democratic Parties.[2]

The liberal Nelles also sought to mediate sectarian fighting among American radicals, sitting with Roger Baldwin and others on a special committee established in August 1922 to investigate charges levied by

Soviet Russia.[10] The committee ultimately exonerated the FSR of these charges, but Nelles declined to sign the final report because he was appointed as a law partner as counsel for that organization, a circumstance that created a potential conflict of interest.[10]

In 1924, Nelles and Shorr appealed United States ex rel. Tisi v. Tod (1924) and United States ex rel. Mensevich v. Tod before the

U.S. Supreme Court.[11][12]

American Civil Liberties Union

Shorr and Nelles served as counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).[8]

Holding pacifist beliefs himself,[13] following the entry of the United States into World War I in April 1917 Nelles was persuaded by his old college classmate Roger Baldwin to leave his practice to become house counsel for the fledgling National Civil Liberties Bureau (NCLB) of the American Union Against Militarism that Baldwin had helped launch.[14] This organization, based in New York City, would eventually emerge as the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Civil Liberties Bureau in its first years dealt primarily with cases involving

Espionage Act. Among those high-profile cases which Nelles handled included the trial of the American Socialist Society and its Rand School of Social Science and the trial of Max Eastman and his publication, The Masses.[2]

The offices of the National Civil Liberties Bureau were raided by the

search warrants
.

Nelles and Baldwin were joined in the main office of the National Civil Liberties Bureau by

W.W. Norton & Co. in 1940.[19]

Academic career

Nelles later served on the faculty of Yale Law School where he often taught courses on the history of labor injunctions.

Personal life and death

Nelles was a

social democrat and a member of the League for Industrial Democracy during the 1920s.[2] At the time of his death he was regarded by friends as a liberal rather than a socialist.[13]

Walter Nelles died at the age of 53 on April 1, 1937, in New Haven, Connecticut, following a brief illness.[1]

Works

Books and pamphlets

  • Espionage Act Cases, with Certain Others on Related Points: New Law in Making as to Criminal Utterance in War-time (1918)[20]
  • Seeing Red: Civil Liberty and Law in the Period Following the War (1920)[21]
  • A Liberal in Wartime: The Education of Albert DeSilver (1940)[22]

Articles

  • "Contempt by Publication in the United States," Part One: Columbia Law Review, vol. 28, no. 4 (April 1928), pp. 401–431; Part Two: vol. 28, no. 5 (May 1928) pp. 525–562. With Carol Weiss King. —Reissued as a pamphlet by the ACLU.
  • "A Strike and its Legal Consequences: An Examination of the Receivership Precedent for the Labor Injunction," Yale Law Journal, vol. v. 40, no. 4 (February 1931), pp. 507–554.
  • "The Summary Power to Punish for Contempt," Columbia Law Review, vol. 31, no. 6 (June 1931), pp. 956–974.
  • "The First American Labor Case," Yale Law Journal,vol. 41, no. 2 (December 1931), pp. 165–200.
  • "Commonwealth v. Hunt," Columbia Law Review,vol. 32, no. 7 (November 1932), pp. 1128–1169.
  • "Towards Legal Understanding," Columbia Law Review, Part One: vol. 34, no. 5 (May 1934), pp. 862–889; Part Two: vol. 34, no. 6 (June 1934), pp. 1041–1075.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Prof. Walter Nelles of Yale Law School: An Expert on Labor Injunction and Former Lawyer Here is Dead at Age of 53". New York Times. 1 April 1937. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Solon DeLeon with Irma C. Hayssen and Grace Poole (eds.), The American Labor Who's Who. New York: Hanford Press, 1925; pg. 170.
  3. ^ Michael Hannon (2010). "The People v. Benjamin Gitlow (1920)" (PDF). University of Minnesota - Law Library. pp. 8, 15. Retrieved 12 December 2023.
  4. ^ "People v. Gitlow". Case Text. 1 April 1921. Retrieved 12 December 2023.
  5. ^ "Gitlow v. People of the State of New York". Cornell - Legal Information Institute. 8 June 1925. Retrieved 12 December 2023.
  6. ^
    ISBN 978-0300113006
    . Retrieved 2 December 2017.
  7. ^ "Carol Weiss King, 1895-1952," Jewish Women Encyclopedia, Jewish Women Archive, jwa.org/
  8. ^ a b Smith, Donald L. (1986). Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Defender of Liberty and Law. Harvard University Press. p. 48.
    ISBN 9780674966857
    . Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  9. ^ Baldwin, Roger N. (1 November 1922). "Report of the Investigating Committee of Five: To the Friends of Soviet Russia" (PDF). Soviet Russia. Friends of Soviet Russia: 238. Retrieved 8 April 2021.
  10. ^ a b Cottrell, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union, pg. 171.
  11. ^ "United States ex rel. Tisi v. Tod". Wikisource. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  12. ^ "United States ex rel. Mensevich v. Tod". Wikisource. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  13. ^ a b Norman L. Meyers, "Walter Nelles," Yale Law Journal, vol. 46, no. 8 (June 1937), pg. 1279.
  14. ^ Roger C. Cottrell, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001; pp. 53, 57.
  15. ^ Edgar B. Speer, "Roger Baldwin and The ACLU: Excerpt of a Report by a Former Special Agent of the Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice, May 3rd, 1920." Corvallis, OR: 1000 Flowers Publishing, 2007.
  16. ^ Cottrell, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union, pg. 57.
  17. ^ a b Quoted in Cottrell, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union, pg. 123.
  18. ^ Cottrell, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union, pg. 123.
  19. ^ See: Walter Nelles, A Liberal in Wartime: The Education of Albert DeSilver. New York: W.W. Norton, 1940.
  20. ^ Walter Nelles, ed. (1918). Espionage Act Cases, with Certain Others on Related Points: New Law in Making as to Criminal Utterance in War-time. National Civil Liberties Bureau. Retrieved 10 March 2024.
  21. ^ Walter Nelles (1920). Seeing Red: Civil Liberty and Law in the Period Following the War. American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved 10 March 2024.
  22. ^ Walter Nelles (1940). A Liberal in Wartime: The Education of Albert DeSilver. WW Norton. Retrieved 10 March 2024.

External sources

  • Norman L. Meyers, "Walter Nelles," Yale Law Journal, vol. 46, no. 8 (June 1937), pp. 1279–1281.
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