Monday, November 7, 2016

E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr. (1925-2016)

Hogan Lovells announces that Elijah Barrett Prettyman, Jr., a lion of the Washington bar, died on November 4.  Among other things, he was Katherine Anne Porter's lawyer and close friend.  Hear him,  here, discuss his two heroes: his father, a federal judge, and Justice Robert H. Jackson, who, as it happened supplanted, somewhat peremptorily, Prettyman père, as general counsel of the Bureau of Internal Revenue during FDR's first year in office.  We’re grateful to John Q. Barrett, St. John's University School of Law, for references to (1) this interview with Prettyman and Chief Justice John Roberts, whom he mentored at Hogan and Hartson; (2) this account of Prettyman’s attendance upon Justice Jackson when Chief Justice Earl Warren visited him in the hospital during the drafting of Brown v. Board of Education; and (3) two roundtables (here and here) of Supreme Court clerks recalling the Court’s consideration of the case.  H/t: Brad Snyder