No. 2

Having jolted the U. S. five months before by appointing radical Hugo LaFayette Black to the Supreme Court, Franklin Roosevelt last week chose to jolt the nation by his conservative appointment to the Court. So one afternoon White House Executive Clerk Maurice C. Latta marched in to the Senate with the nomination of retiring Justice George Sutherland's successor: Stanley Forman Reed. So, also, photographers stormed Solicitor General Reed in his office (see cut) to catch him before he put on judicial dignity.

The son of prosperous Dr. John A. Reed of Maysville, Ky., Stanley Reed had a thorough education at Kentucky Wesleyan College and Yale University, studied law at the University of Virginia, Columbia University, the Sorbonne in Paris. His education was polished off with four years in the Kentucky Legislature and a War-time first lieutenancy in the Army. At the behest not of Franklin Roosevelt but of Herbert Hoover he left his comfortable law practice in Maysville to go to Washington in 1929 as attorney for the Federal Farm Board.

His service for the New Deal began as general counsel for RFC, having been hired away from the Farm Board to serve Jesse Jones in 1932. When, working with RFC's staff of 75 lawyers as many as 18 hours a day during the bank holiday, he managed to keep abreast of the tremendous legal complexities involved in demands for RFC help from thousands of banks in 48 States, Attorney General Cummings was impressed. When New Dealer Cummings borrowed Lawyer Reed to conduct the Government's successful defense of a collateral gold clause case before the Supreme Court in 1935 he was still more impressed, got him the appointment of assistant attorney general and that same year persuaded Franklin Roosevelt that Stanley Reed should be given the Solicitor Generalship, highest legal command save Homer Cummings' in the first great war between the New Deal and the Supreme Court.

Victorious in defending eight major New Deal laws before the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Reed suffered three defeats, in cases involving NRA, AAA and the Bankhead Act (where a combination of overwork and hostility from the bench brought him to a courtroom collapse). After the AAA case his dark, lively wife, Winifred, long active in politics as registrar general of the D. A. R., performed the most audacious political feat of Washington's 1936 social season by inviting all the Supreme Court Justices to dinner.

Now, in joining his former guests on the bench, Stanley Reed gets his first profitable promotion since going to Washington. His first job with the Farm Board paid $25,000, his second with RFC $12,500, his third as Solicitor General $10,000, but his fourth on the Supreme Court will pay $20,000.

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