This is a sample of the colorful historical articles that can be found in the Society’s Quarterly newsletter, which members receive four times a year. The Quarterly also includes updates about Society events and news of interest to members.


Editor’s Note:

During her lifetime, Mrs. Griswold was a frequent visitor to the Supreme Court. Many of her visits were occasions to hear her husband, Erwin N. Griswold, argue before the Supreme Court. Mrs. Griswold was present to hear 113 of these cases.

When Mrs. Griswold came to Washington, D.C. as a bride, Erwin Griswold was an attorney in the office of the Solicitor General of the United States. In 1934, Griswold joined the faculty of Harvard Law School, and in 1946 he became Dean of Harvard Law School. The Griswolds returned to Washington when Dean Griswold served as Solicitor General of the United States from 1967-1973. Dean Griswold became a partner in Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue in 1973 and the Griswolds continued to reside in Washington until his death in 1994 and hers five years later.

Mrs. Griswold received an A.B. degree from Stanford University and a Masters from Columbia University Library School. She worked as a librarian in the Los Angeles City School Library. Mrs. Griswold wrote a number of book reviews for publication in magazines and newspapers, including professional periodicals, including The Publisher’s Weekly.

In August 1939 Mrs. Griswold contracted polio and she was unable to walk without the aid of braces and crutches. Mrs. Griswold’s first set of braces were made by Sam, the craftsman at the Boston Children’s Hospital brace shop, who made Franklin D. Roosevelt’s braces.

She worked hard to publicize the needs of the aged and the disabled, visiting hospitals and rehabilitation centers throughout the world. In particular, she was an avid advocate of the need to provide access to public buildings for the handicapped. The National Gallery of Art and the British Museum were two of her hundreds of successful conversions.

The following reminiscences are Mrs. Griswold’s personal account of her experiences with many of the Justices of the Supreme Court who served during the 1930s. They afford glimpses into the social life of the era as well as the personalities of the Justices involved. While Mrs. Griswold knew 31 Justices well, she restricted her account to those she knew in her first years in Washington.

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After Erwin Griswold and I were married in California, we arrived by train in Washington, D.C. on January 11, 1932. Erwin would continue to be a lawyer in the office of Solicitor General Charles Evans Hughes, Jr. in the Department of Justice. I did not go to the Supreme Court January 12, 1932 for that afternoon a party was being given in our honor. I was absolutely crushed to learn that had been Justice Holmes’ last day on the Supreme Court.

Two months later, Holmes’ law clerk, Harvard Law School graduate H. Chapman Rose, had Erwin and me invited to have tea with Justice Holmes. We went to his Eye Street residence which they said was the only house in Washington D.C. that smelled like Beacon Hill, Boston, with its horsehair furniture and butcher’s wax. I noticed a vase of violets. Violets had been the favorite flower of Justice Holmes’ wife Fanny. This gallant, 91-year-old gentleman showed his age as he labored to get up from his armchair. I sat down very fast. The maid brought in the tea tray and had me pour. When the Justice heard that I came from California, with a twinkle in his eye, and no sign of age, he said: “The last stand of the frontier was when I saw a top hat at the Cliff House in San Francisco.”

Mark De Wolfe Howe told us that Justice Holmes had been in San Francisco in 1899 after he became Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts--where he had served with distinction for twenty years. In 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt, “Liking this Massachusetts Justice’s liberal credentials,” nominated him to be an Associate Justice.

When he and his wife Fanny moved to Washington, D.C. in 1902, Holmes found Lafayette Square “so different from what it had been forty years ago,” when he and his Harvard Regiment of the Twentieth Massachusetts Infantry, tired soldiers fighting to save the Union, “had trampled the park grass into mire.” It had been at the height of the Civil War that Julia Ward Howe had accompanied her husband to Washington where he was to survey the health conditions of the Union troops. Seeing these bivouacked Union soldiers walking through the mud had influenced Julia Ward Howe to write “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” “Let us die to make men free.” Holmes reminiscing said “he had had the sword, now over the mantle, with him on August 30, 1861 at the Battle of Manassas where he heard the guns roar; where Daniel Webster’s son was killed. . . .” Justice Holmes went on to say, “when you drive to see the Manassas Battleground (called Bull Run by Northerners) the sign will tell you that Confederate soldiers won the Battle, but we won the Goddam war.”

Holmes was proud to follow in the footsteps of his maternal grandfather, Judge Charles Jackson, who had preceded him on the Supreme Judicial Court. And Holmes was grateful that his grandfather Jackson had willed to him that stand-up desk in the corner of his study. Here Holmes stood to write his opinions and dissents in longhand, and vigorously upheld the Constitution of the United States. Some of his Supreme Court Brethren thought his opinions too short. He commented, “There is nothing so conducive to brevity like a caving in of the knees.”

Harvard’s President Charles W. Eliot having worked with Oliver Wendell Holmes. Jr., as a Harvard Overseer, and having heard Holmes’ twelve Lowell lectures about “The Common Law,” in 1882 appointed Holmes to be a professor at Harvard Law School. The Lowell lectures had given Holmes, Jr. great recognition. Six feet three inches tall, the junior Holmes had risen above being overshadowed by his five foot five celebrity father, Dr. Holmes, professor, “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,” poet laureate of Boston for half a century, and the discoverer of the contagiousness of puerperal fever.

The same year, President Eliot also appointed Louis Dembitz Brandeis, graduate of the class of 1877, to be a Harvard Law School professor. Brandeis was drawn to Holmes, this scholar with a soldier’s bearing. As colleagues, the two debated social questions. They taught with the case method. Holmes’ tenure was just three months, because he was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Judicial Court. Benefactor Samuel Warren lured Brandeis from teaching to be his law partner, and introduced Brandeis to the Boston Brahim—to Emerson, William James, Longfellow and other leading figures in Boston. As a law partner, Brandeis “waged battle against big business, against Boston and Maine railroads rates, sought a solution for a labor conflict between musicians of the Boston Symphony and Henry Lee Higginson; represented Filene’s employees. . . .” He became famous as a “People’s Lawyer.” His immersion in public activities was mirrored by his wife, Alice, working for the reform of juvenile courts, and assisting the families of Sacco and Vanzetti. Alice Brandeis and Harvard Law School’s Professor Samuel Williston’s wife were members of the Saturday Morning Club. Brandeis actively campaigned for Woodrow Wilson, who as President nominated Brandeis to be an Associate Justice.

Erwin and I were invited to have dinner with Justice and Mrs. Brandeis at their unostentatious apartment at 2205 California Street. Brandeis liked being with bright Harvard Law School graduates, particularly ones who had been on the Harvard Law Review, which he helped create in 1887. As an officer of the Harvard Law School Association, Brandeis had Holmes speak at their first banquet. As we went into dinner, I waited for Mrs. Brandeis to be seated. But Poindexter, who by day was Justice Brandeis’ messenger, and served as butler at night, told me to sit down. Mrs. Brandeis was a skilled hostess, achieving the best of conversation. She carved the leg of lamb and did everything possible to save the Justice’s strength. In 1932, protocol said the ranking lady should leave the dinner party at ten o’clock. It was said that no clocks struck at the Brandeis apartment except at ten o’clock at night. The Justice got up at five each morning. Paul Freund, his law clerk, told of working all night and the next morning as he pushed the paper under the door of the Jutices’s study, the Justice pulled the paper through to the other side. Justice Brandeis’ frailty was belied by his extra-judicial activities. Politicians flocked to confer with him. Even President Wilson came to get his advice. At age 75 Brandeis gave up horseback riding. But he and Justice Holmes often walked home together from the Supreme Court.

President Calvin Coolidge nominated his Amherst classmate, former Dean of Columbia Law School, Harlan Fiske Stone, to be an Associate Justice. Holmes and Brandeis welcomed Stone who often joined these liberals in their Supreme Court opinions, or in dissent against the conservative views of Justice Butler, McReynolds, Sutherland and Van Devanter.

In those simple days of 1932, Justices’ wives were at home on Monday afternoons for tea. Mrs. Stone, always at home, was a superb hostess. As we went to have tea at Stone’s beautiful 2346 Wyoming Avenue home, we saw many Department of Justice people. After hearing Supreme Court arguments from12 to 2 and 2:30 to 4:30, Justice Stone returned to his home office, where he had just one law clerk, then entered the living room by a secret door in the living room bookcase, and sat down to talk to tea guests. Justice and Mrs. Stone were very approachable, and treated Erwin and me like their D.C. children.
As the Stones included us in their dinner parties, and we had the honor of having them to dinner, we learned of their absorbing interest in art. Sometimes as Justice Stone went to call on Justice Holmes, he took prints for he knew of Holmes’ great admiration for the works of Albrecht Durer. When Amherst graduate Henry Clay Folger gave Amherst his gift of Shakespeare folios and funds to build a Shakespeare library, President Coolidge insisted that Justice Stone be chairman of the Amherst trustees, to administer this gift and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

The Stones would describe their summer travels to Europe, and enjoyment of the simple life at their cottage on Isle au Haut, off the coast of Maine. During the summer, Agnes Stone had time to pursue her hobby of painting. When her paintings were exhibited, Justice Stone was proud to take friends to see them. Fanny Holmes, a skilled needle woman, had had her needlepoint landscapes exhibited.

President Coolidge had brought Dean Stone to Washington to be Attorney General. He had to fire Harding’s Attorney General, Harry M. Daugherty, who was implicated in a scandal. In the Coolidge Cabinet, Stone got to know Charles Evans Hughes and Herbert Hoover.

The Stones and Griwolds spoke with much approval of the Herbert Hoovers. Quaker Herbert Hoover was outgoing with friends in his home, but seemed uncomfortable with the press and the “Dear Public.” During and after World War I, he was Famine Relief Administrator, and got food to starving Europeans. From World War I days I can remember my parents admonishing me to meet all the food on my plate. “Remember the starving Belgians.”

President Hoover selected Stone (one of his best friends) to be included in the White House pre-breakfast Medicine Ball Cabinet.

I knew Mrs. Hoover well as I had been a Stanford University student at the time the Hoovers were residing at their home on the campus. It was our good fortune to go often to the White House. At a Christmas party given for their son Allan, we danced in the East Room, and were entertained by piano logs done by Stanford graduate Allen Campbell, son of Arizona’s governor. While in the White House, Mrs. Hoover continued her active role in Girl Scout volunteering; she had me to lunch at the Girl Scout House. She told us of her finding in White house storage the four chairs that had been used in 1862 as President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

President Hoover in 1930 nominated Charles Evans Hughes to be Chief Justice of the United States. As Chief Justice, the distinguished father would extinguish his son. Charles Evans Hughes, Jr. could o longer be Solicitor General because he could not argue cases before his father.

I felt it a privilege to hear legal argument at the Supreme Court. I found Chief Justice Hughes presiding over the Court with mastery. Fellow Justices described him as “the greatest in a great line of Chief Justices, famed for his sincerity, fairness and good humor, using his great intellect for the common weal.” I was told of Chief Justice Hughes carrying out one of his life’s hardest assignments. The day I arrived in Washington, D.C. as a bride, he went to Justice Holmes’ Eye Street residence, and asked the 91-year-old Justice to resign. Holmes’ law clerk had been asked to leave the study. When he returned, he found the Chief Justice so upset at asking Holmes to resign that he had tears streaming down his cheeks. Justice Holmes took the suggestion like a general, but his maid and butler were furious, feeling that their general had been demoted.

Chief Judge Benjamin Cardozo of the New York Court of Appeals was asked to take Holmes’ place. Hughes had first met Cardozo as “a lad in knickerbockers.” The junior Hughes had been a Cardozo law clerk. Hughes senior regarded Cardozo as “the outstanding jurist of his time, a rare spirit, learned, courageous, saintly, frail.”

Cardozo was reluctant to leave the New York Court of Apeals where “a circle of friends grew about this hitherto solitary man.” His sister, Nell, who had reared him after the death of his mother when he was nine, had just died. His ancestors came form Portugal and Spain to America. As patriots his maternal great great grandfather had helped drill Revolutionary soldiers; his great great uncle, Rabbi Seixas, participated in George Washington’s inaugural. But upon hearing why his father, Albert Cardozo, had to resign from the New York State Supreme Court, a sadness settled upon Benjamin Cardozo that influenced his whole life. When Benjamin was three years old, Boss Tweed and Tammany forces had corrupted his father and other two judges. The judges “had countenanced illegal naturalization, creating new citizens wholesale (not infrequently a thousand a day).” The Cardozo name was under a cloud. Benjamin’s whole life was spent trying to redeem the name.

With pride, he talked about his cousin Emma Lazarus whose verses appeared at the base of the Statue of Liberty. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to be Free.”

We went to the Supreme Court to see Benjamin N. Cardozo sworn in. He was so lonesome in Washington. But Brandeis and Stone often went to confer with him, and welcomed him to their homes at any time. Justice Stone commented that Cardozo would not accept strangers’ invitations but might welcome a Griswold invitation to dinner, and told of his taking Justice Stone to the Philadelphia Symphony concert when Yehudi Menuhin was soloist. He had read The Bridge of San Luis Rey and “found it so wonderful that he had memorized some of the perfect sentences.”

The Justices and their family members mingled at private parties, such as the Hughes New Year’s Day reception, where we got to know Chief Justice Hughes’ daughter, Elizabeth. We also became friends of Justice Butler’s daughter, Anne. When one went to the Butler’s home, you found the whole family most considerate of Anne’s sister who had had sleeping sickness. Justice Roberts’ daughter, also named Elizabeth, invited us to Sunday dinner. Justice Roberts stood up to carve the roast beef, commenting that this was easier on the shoulder he had injured in a fall from a horse. He said that as usual Chief Justice Hughes had been most thoughtful, and came to see him every day.

On March 4, 1933, I was at the Capitol to see Franklin Delano Roosevelt inaugurated as President of the United States. A ramp had been built at the Capitol to accommodate the needs of Roosevelt, who had polio. Outgoing President Hoover walked briskly down the ramp. Roosevelt, hanging on to his son James with one hand, and to a stair rail with the other, shuffled along at such a slow pace that observers wondered if he would make it to the rostrum. After Roosevelt was sworn in by Chief Justice Hughes, his forceful words “nothing to fear but fear itself” were heard by the multitude. Six years later President Roosevelt nominated Harvard Law School Professor Felix Frankfurter to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in June 1939.

Justice Van Devanter was born in Marion, Indiana. When he heard that I was also born in Marion, he had us to tea. He regaled us with his talk of riding circuit in Wyoming in 1889, saying that he was the first judge not to place two guns on the courtroom bench in front of him before hearing a case.

Justice McReynolds, a cantankerous bachelor, had us to one of his famous breakfasts. He was a pleasant host, a contrast to his expression of displeasure as he sat on the Supreme Court. He showed his intolerance by turning his back on Justices Brandeis and Justice Cardozo and any woman, such as Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt, who argued cases before the Court. Mindful of this, Chief Justice and Mrs. Hughes had two separate judicial dinners, dividing the Justices to avoid embarrassment.

President Roosevelt in a fireside chat March 9, 1937 retaliated against the Court’s hostility to New Deal legislation by outlining what was to be called the “Court-packing plan.” In their book, Nine Old Men, Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen commented on the fact that Justice Brandeis was 80 years old and six other Justices were over 70. The Senate Judiciary Committee had hearings about this Court-packing legislation with Senator Willard Tydings and Burton Wheeler leading the opposition. All over the country many lawyers spoke out against it. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee, “The Supreme Court is fully abreast of its work. There is no congestion of cases on our calendar.”
Before we moved to Massachusetts in 1934 as Erwin Griswold became a Harvard Law School Professor, we had been entertained by, or had entertained, eight of the “None Old Men” on the Court. We felt very honored to have known these outstanding Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.