Note: Walter Gellhorn on Crowell v. Benson

Some time ago, I reported on Crowell v. Benson, 285 U.S. 22 (1932), as viewed from the docket books of Justices Pierce Butler and Owen Roberts,  In Crowell, the US Supreme Court by a 5-3 vote decided that certain “jurisdictional” facts found by certain federal administrators were reviewable de novo in the federal courts.  Administrative Law scholars tend to criticize Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes for granting federal judges too much supervisory power over administrators.  Federal Courts scholars tend to criticize him for leaving federal judges with too little.  Here is another research note on the case, based on a letter in the Herbert Wechsler Papers at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

The letter is from Walter Gellhorn, a recent Columbia law graduate who was Harlan Fiske Stone’s legal secretary in the 1931 Term, to his classmate Wechsler, who would succeed him as Stone’s clerk and serve with him on the Columbia law faculty.  The letter is part of an interesting correspondence enlivened by Gellhorn’s Court gossip, humor, and occasional earthiness.  For example, after recounting his disagreement with Stone on the reasoning of an opinion, Gellhorn observed, “I'm a pain in the ass, even to myself.”

Gellhorn dated the letter “Midnight Monday” and wrote that “today we entered upon a two weeks' recess.”  Matthew Hofstedt, Associate Curator, Office of the Curator, Supreme Court of the United States, kindly consulted the Supreme Court's journal for me and found (on p. 213) that on the day Crowell v. Benson was decided (February 23, 1932), the Chief Justice announced a recess from “Monday, February 29, to Monday, March 14, next.”  Gellhorn wrote, then, at midnight, Monday, February 29, 1932.
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