The

Volume XXV

Green

Bag

April, 1913

Number 4

The New Attorney-General of the United States

FOR Attorney-General President Wil son has chosen a man of unusually broad experience in the investigations and litigation arising under the Sherman anti-trust law, who has an exceptional understanding of the details of organiza tion and management of large indus trial enterprises and will place his large knowledge of business affairs at the ser vice of the Government. What policy Mr. James Clark McReynolds will choose to pursue in the administration of the Sherman law cannot of course, be pre dicted. The view is freely expressed that it is likely to be a continuation of that of his predecessor. Mr. McReynolds has long been in training for the posi tion to which he was lately advanced, and brings to it an ideal equipment on the practical side. He is no longer a subordinate department official, and if he has formed opinions of his own which differ from those of his predeces sor, President Wilson is likely to place great confidence in his judgment and to allow him a wide range of discretion in determining what policy shall be pur sued in suits against corporations. Mr. McReynolds' work in connection with the prosecution of the tobacco and anthracite coal trust cases showed abilities of a high order. He has the faculty of getting quickly at the facts, and his grasp of practical matters, his insight into the technique of business, give him the equipment to be acquired only

by extended experience and long fa miliarity with intricate subjects. It is difficult to believe that so thorough a discipline could not have steadied and ripened his judgment, with the result that the nation may look for speedy and certain convictions of corporations plainly violating the law, and a tolerant attitude toward those whose operations, however extensive, seem to be entirely legitimate. Mr. McReynolds is fifty-one years old, and it was only ten or twelve years ago that he was a professor in Vanderbilt University Law School. He is a man with a broad range of accomplishments, who will doubtless uphold high profes sional ideals and exert a wholesome influence in the great office to which he has been advanced. The opportunities which that office offers, through the leadership of the American bar, for an exemplification of the finest traits and loftiest principles of the lawyer and advocate are tremendous, and it may be anticipated that a man of Mr. Mc Reynolds' undoubted breadth and ver satility will rise to them. The new Attorney-General was borat Elkton, Ky., on July 23, 1862, and was educated at Vanderbilt University and in the law department of the Uni versity of Virginia. He was a professor there from 1900 to 1903, when he was appointed an Assistant United States Attorney-General by President Roose-