Monday, May 4, 2015

Cushman on McReynolds's Other Law Clerks

Scholarship on the legal secretaries of the justices long eclipsed by the eminences who clerked for Brandeis, Cardozo, Holmes and Stone keeps on coming.  The latest is from the Supreme Court Historical Society’s Clare Cushman: Beyond Knox: James C. McReynolds' Other Law Clerks, 1914-1941.
The Forgotten Memoir of John Knox, edited by Dennis J. Hutchinson and David J. Garrow in 2002, revealed how badly Justice James C. McReynolds treated his clerk in the 1936 Term. Was Knox's negative clerkship experience typical? An examination of the numerous letters written home by Milton S. Musser, McReynolds' clerk from May 1938 to October 1940, provides a valuable comparison.