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{{Short description|American lawyer and legal scholar and activist}}
'''Walter Nelles''' (1883 – 1937) was an American [[lawyer]] and [[law professor]]. Nelles is best remembered as the first chief legal counsel of the [[National Civil Liberties Bureau]] and its successor, the [[American Civil Liberties Union]]. In this connection, Nelles achieved public notice for his legal work on behalf of [[pacifism|pacifists]] charged with violating the [[Espionage Act]] during [[World War I]] and in other politically-charged [[civil rights]] and [[constitutional law]] cases in later years.
'''Walter Nelles''' (April 21, 1883 – April 1, 1937) was an American [[lawyer]] and [[law professor]]. Nelles is best remembered as the co-founder and first chief legal counsel of the [[National Civil Liberties Bureau]] and its successor, the [[American Civil Liberties Union]]. In this connection, Nelles achieved public notice for his legal work on behalf of [[pacifism|pacifists]] charged with violating the [[Espionage Act]] during [[World War I]] and in other politically charged [[civil rights]] and [[constitutional law]] cases in later years.<ref name=NYTobit>
{{cite news
| url = https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0E15F63E5A157A93C3A9178FD85F438385F9&scp=1&sq=%22walter+nelles%22&st=p
| title = Prof. Walter Nelles of Yale Law School: An Expert on Labor Injunction and Former Lawyer Here is Dead at Age of 53
| work = New York Times
| date = 1 April 1937
| accessdate = 28 September 2017}}</ref>


==Biography==
==Background==
===Early years===


Walter Nelles was born April 21, 1883 in [[Leavenworth, Kansas]], the son of a [[civil engineer]].<ref name=ALWW>Solon DeLeon with Irma C. Hayssen and Grace Poole (eds.), ''The American Labor Who's Who.'' New York: Hanford Press, 1925; pg. 170.</ref> Nelles attended the prestigious [[Phillips Exeter Academy]] in [[Exeter, New Hampshire]] in preparation for an [[Ivy League]] collegiate education.<ref name=ALWW /> Upon graduation from Exeter, Nelles enrolled in [[Harvard University]], from which he graduated in 1905 with a [[Bachelors degree]].<ref name=ALWW />
Walter Nelles was born April 21, 1883, in [[Leavenworth, Kansas]], the son of George Thomas Nelles, a [[civil engineer]].<ref name=ALWW>Solon DeLeon with Irma C. Hayssen and Grace Poole (eds.), ''The American Labor Who's Who.'' New York: Hanford Press, 1925; pg. 170.</ref> Nelles attended the prestigious [[Phillips Exeter Academy]] in [[Exeter, New Hampshire]], in preparation for an [[Ivy League]] collegiate education.<ref name=ALWW /> Upon graduation from Exeter, Nelles enrolled in [[Harvard University]], from which he graduated in 1905 with a [[Bachelor's degree]].<ref name=ALWW />


After graduation, Nelles taught as an instructor at the [[University of Wisconsin]] from the fall of 1905 to the spring of 1907.<ref name=ALWW /> Nelles then left [[Madison, Wisconsin|Madison]] to return to Harvard, receiving a [[Masters degree]] in 1908 before moving on [[Harvard Law School]].<ref name=ALWW /> He graduated from Harvard Law with an [[LL.B.]] in 1911.<ref name=ALWW /> During the period of his graduate education, Nelles also taught as an instructor at [[Lowell Institute]] and [[Radcliffe College]].<ref name=ALWW />
After graduation, Nelles taught as an instructor at the [[University of Wisconsin]] from the fall of 1905 to the spring of 1907.<ref name=ALWW /> Nelles then left [[Madison, Wisconsin|Madison]] to return to Harvard, receiving a [[Master's degree]] in 1908 before moving on [[Harvard Law School]].<ref name=ALWW /> He graduated from Harvard Law with an [[LL.B.]] in 1911.<ref name=ALWW /> During the period of his graduate education, Nelles also taught as an instructor at [[Lowell Institute]] and [[Radcliffe College]].<ref name=ALWW />


===Career===
==Career==


After passing the [[bar examination]], Nelles entered private legal practice.
After passing the [[bar examination]], Nelles entered private legal practice.


===Law practice===
Holding [[pacifism|pacifist]] beliefs himself,<ref name=Meyers>Norman L. Meyers, [http://www.jstor.org/pss/792154 "Walter Nelles,"] ''Yale Law Journal,'' vol. 46, no. 8 (June 1937), pg. 1279.</ref> following the entry of the United States into [[World War I]] in April 1917 Nelles was persuaded by his old college classmate [[Roger Baldwin]] to leave his practice to become house counsel for the fledgling [[National Civil Liberties Bureau]] (NCLB) of the [[American Union Against Militarism]] that Baldwin had helped launch.<ref>Roger C. Cottrell, ''Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union.'' New York: Columbia University Press, 2001; pp. 53, 57.</ref> This organization, based in [[New York City]], would eventually emerge as the [[American Civil Liberties Union]].


During World War I, Nelles was a partner in the law firm of [[Swinburne Hale|Hale]], Nelles & [[Isaac Shorr|Shorr]].
The Civil Liberties Bureau in its first years dealt primarily with cases involving [[conscientious objector|conscientious objectors]] and political opponents of the war who faced charges under the so-called [[Espionage Act]]. Among those high-profile cases which Nelles handled included the trial of the American Socialist Society and its [[Rand School of Social Science]] and the trial of [[Max Eastman]] and his publication, ''[[The Masses]].''<ref name=ALWW />


Nelles defended Communist Party co-founder [[Benjamin Gitlow]] for half a decade. In 1920, Nelles and Murray C. Bernay served of counsel to defend Gitlow in ''People vs. Gitlow'' on behalf of the National Civil Liberties Bureau (soon renamed the [[American Civil Liberties Union]] or ACLU), then Nelles and Charles Recht on appeal.<ref>
The offices of the National Civil Liberties Bureau were raided by the [[United States Department of Justice|Department of Justice]] on August 30, 1918 by agents who seized all of Nelles' files.<ref>Edgar B. Speer, [http://marxisthistory.org/history/usa/groups/aclu/1920/0503-speer-onbaldwin.pdf "Roger Baldwin and The ACLU: Excerpt of a Report by a Former Special Agent of the Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice, May 3rd, 1920."] Corvallis, OR: 1000 Flowers Publishing, 2007.</ref> The raid was based upon invalid [[search warrants]].
{{cite web
| author = Michael Hannon


| title = The People v. Benjamin Gitlow (1920)
Nelles and Baldwin were joined in the main office of the National Civil Liberties Bureau by [[Albert DeSilver]], a lawyer who left private practice to work full time on the defense of civil liberties in the courts.<ref>Cottrell, ''Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union,'' pg. 57.</ref> The troika guided the activities of the NCLB and the successor ACLU in its earliest years. Roger Baldwin later fondly recalled their partnership:
| publisher = University of Minnesota - Law Library
| url = https://librarycollections.law.umn.edu/documents/darrow/trialpdfs/Gitlow_Case.pdf


| pages = 8, 15
<blockquote>
| date = 2010
"We made a team which was never after equalled in the American Civil LIberties Union. DeSilver contributed the quick unerring judgment, with a gay and easy approach to tough problems; Nelles, the reflective opinions of a studious lawyer sometimes aroused by hot indignations; and I, the techniques of the [[social worker|social case worker]], an organizer and a publicity man for such limited publicity as was open to us."<ref name=Quote>Quoted in Cottrell, ''Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union,'' pg. 123.</ref></blockquote>
| access-date = 12 December 2023}}</ref><ref>
{{cite web
| title = People v. Gitlow
| publisher = Case Text
| url = https://casetext.com/case/people-v-gitlow-3
| pages =
| date = 1 April 1921
| access-date = 12 December 2023}}</ref> From 1923 to 1925 on behalf of the ACLU, Nelles and a young [[Walter Pollak]] argued [[Gitlow v. New York]] before the [[United States Supreme Court]] against a conviction for "advocacy of criminal anarchy."<ref>
{{cite web
| title = Gitlow v. People of the State of New York
| publisher = Cornell - Legal Information Institute
| url = https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/268/652
| pages =
| date = 8 June 1925
| access-date = 12 December 2023}}</ref> The court upheld Gitlow's conviction but recognized that the [[due process clause]] of the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|14th Amendment]] [[incorporation of the bill of rights|incorporated]], which protected fundamental provisions of the [[United States Bill of Rights|Bill of Rights]], including the [[freedom of speech]]. (New York State Governor [[Al Smith]] commuted Gitlow's sentence.)<ref name=Yale>
{{cite encyclopedia |last=Pollak |first=Louis H. |author-link=Louis H. Pollak |editor-last=Newman |editor-first=Roger K. |encyclopedia=The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law |title=Pollak, Walter Heilprin (1887–1941) |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C364VLeAo8gC |access-date=2 December 2017 |year=2009 |publisher=Yale University Press |pages=430|isbn=978-0300113006 }}</ref>


Throughout the 1920s, Nelles participated in a loose partnership of left-wing attorneys, including [[Joseph R. Brodsky]], [[Swinburne Hale]], [[Carol Weiss King]], and [[Isaac Shorr]].<ref>[http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/king-carol-weiss "Carol Weiss King, 1895-1952,"] ''Jewish Women Encyclopedia,'' Jewish Women Archive, jwa.org/</ref> The firm support legal investigations published in the 67-page ''Report upon the Illegal Practices of the United States Department of Justice'' by the National Popular Government League (NGPL); Swinburne Hale did a majority of the work on the report.<ref name=Smith>
The three men "loved each other," Lucille B. Milner, secretary of the NCLB remembered.<ref name=Quote /> The team was abruptly shattered when DeSilver was killed in a fall from a railroad car in 1924, dying at the age of 36.<ref>Cottrell, ''Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union,'' pg. 123.</ref> Nelles later memorialized his fallen colleague by writing his biography, published by [[W.W. Norton & Co.]] in 1940.<ref>See: Walter Nelles, ''A Liberal in Wartime: The Education of Albert DeSilver.'' New York: W.W. Norton, 1940.</ref>
{{cite book
| first = Donald L.
| last = Smith
| title = Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Defender of Liberty and Law
| publisher = Harvard University Press
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=s35PvOnr0XYC
| page = 48
| date = 1986
| isbn = 9780674966857
| accessdate = 28 September 2017}}</ref>


In 1920, Nelles served on the defense team of the five [[Socialist Party of America|Socialist]] members of the [[New York State Assembly]] who were denied the right to assume the seats to which they had been elected by the [[Republican Party (U.S.)|Republican]] Speaker of the House [[Thaddeus C. Sweet]], working in concert with members of both the Republican and [[Democratic Party (U.S.)|Democratic Parties]].<ref name=ALWW />
In 1920, Nelles served on the defense team of the five [[Socialist Party of America|Socialist]] members of the [[New York State Assembly]] who were denied the right to assume the seats to which they had been elected by the [[Republican Party (U.S.)|Republican]] Speaker of the House [[Thaddeus C. Sweet]], working in concert with members of both the Republican and [[Democratic Party (U.S.)|Democratic Parties]].<ref name=ALWW />


The liberal Nelles also sought to mediate sectarian fighting among American radicals, sitting with Roger Baldwin and others on a special committee established in August 1922 to investigate charges levied by [[Abraham Cahan]] and the ''[[Jewish Daily Forward]]'' that the [[Friends of Soviet Russia]] (FSR) organization was engaged in the misappropriation of funds raised for the relief of famine in [[Soviet Russia]].<ref name=Cottrell171>Cottrell, ''Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union,'' pg. 171.</ref> The committee ultimately exonerated the FSR of these charges, but Nelles declined to sign the final report owing to the appointment of a law partner as counsel for that organization — a circumstance which thereby created a potential [[conflict of interest]].<ref name=Cottrell171 />
The liberal Nelles also sought to mediate sectarian fighting among American radicals, sitting with Roger Baldwin and others on a special committee established in August 1922 to investigate charges levied by [[Abraham Cahan]] and ''[[The Jewish Daily Forward]]'' that the [[Friends of Soviet Russia]] (FSR) organization (for which he served as attorney<ref>
{{cite journal
| first = Roger N.
| last = Baldwin
| author-link = Roger Nash Baldwin
| title = Report of the Investigating Committee of Five: To the Friends of Soviet Russia
| journal = Soviet Russia
| publisher = Friends of Soviet Russia
| url = https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/groups/fsr/1922/1101-baldwin-fsrreportof5.pdf
| page = 238
| date = 1 November 1922
| access-date = 8 April 2021}}</ref>) was engaged in the misappropriation of funds raised for the relief of famine in [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics|Soviet Russia]].<ref name=Cottrell171>Cottrell, ''Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union,'' pg. 171.</ref> The committee ultimately exonerated the FSR of these charges, but Nelles declined to sign the final report because he was appointed as a law partner as counsel for that organization, a circumstance that created a potential [[conflict of interest]].<ref name=Cottrell171 />


In 1924, Nelles and Shorr appealed ''United States ex rel. Tisi v. Tod'' (1924) and ''United States ex rel. Mensevich v. Tod'' before the [[Supreme Court of the United States of America|U.S. Supreme Court]].<ref>
Throughout the 1920s, Nelles participated in a loose partnership of left wing attorneys, including [[Joseph Brodsky (attorney)|Joseph Brodsky]], [[Swinburne Hale]], [[Carol Weiss King]], and [[Isaac Shorr]].<ref>[http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/king-carol-weiss "Carol Weiss King, 1895-1952,"] ''Jewish Women Encyclopdia,'' Jewish Women Archive, jwa.org/</ref>
{{cite web
| title = United States ex rel. Tisi v. Tod
| publisher = Wikisource
| url = https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_ex_rel._Tisi_v._Tod
| date =
| accessdate = 28 September 2017}}</ref><ref>
{{cite web
| title = United States ex rel. Mensevich v. Tod
| publisher = Wikisource
| url = https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_ex_rel._Mensevich_v._Tod
| date =
| accessdate = 28 September 2017}}</ref>


===American Civil Liberties Union===
===Academic career===


Shorr and Nelles served as counsel to the [[American Civil Liberties Union]] (ACLU).<ref name=Smith />
Nelles later served on the faculty of [[Yale University]] law school where he often taught courses on the history of labor [[injunction|injunctions]].


Holding [[pacifism|pacifist]] beliefs himself,<ref name=Meyers>Norman L. Meyers, [https://www.jstor.org/pss/792154 "Walter Nelles,"] ''Yale Law Journal,'' vol. 46, no. 8 (June 1937), pg. 1279.</ref> following the entry of the United States into [[World War I]] in April 1917 Nelles was persuaded by his old college classmate [[Roger Nash Baldwin|Roger Baldwin]] to leave his practice to become house counsel for the fledgling [[National Civil Liberties Bureau]] (NCLB) of the [[American Union Against Militarism]] that Baldwin had helped launch.<ref>Roger C. Cottrell, ''Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union.'' New York: Columbia University Press, 2001; pp. 53, 57.</ref> This organization, based in [[New York City]], would eventually emerge as the [[American Civil Liberties Union]].
===Politics===


The Civil Liberties Bureau in its first years dealt primarily with cases involving [[conscientious objector]]s and political opponents of the war who faced charges under the so-called [[Espionage Act]]. Among those high-profile cases which Nelles handled included the trial of the American Socialist Society and its [[Rand School of Social Science]] and the trial of [[Max Eastman]] and his publication, ''[[The Masses]].''<ref name=ALWW />
Nelles was a [[social democrat]] and a member of the [[League for Industrial Democracy]] during the 1920s.<ref name=ALWW /> At the time of his death he was regarded by friends as a [[modern liberalism in the United States|liberal]] rather than a [[socialism|socialist]].<ref name=Meyers />


The offices of the National Civil Liberties Bureau were raided by the [[United States Department of Justice|Department of Justice]] on August 30, 1918, by agents who seized all of Nelles' files.<ref>Edgar B. Speer, [http://marxisthistory.org/history/usa/groups/aclu/1920/0503-speer-onbaldwin.pdf "Roger Baldwin and The ACLU: Excerpt of a Report by a Former Special Agent of the Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice, May 3rd, 1920."] Corvallis, OR: 1000 Flowers Publishing, 2007.</ref> The raid was based upon invalid [[search warrants]].
===Death and legacy===


Nelles and Baldwin were joined in the main office of the National Civil Liberties Bureau by [[Albert DeSilver]], a lawyer who left private practice to work full-time on the defense of civil liberties in the courts.<ref>Cottrell, ''Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union,'' pg. 57.</ref> The troika guided the activities of the NCLB and the successor ACLU in its earliest years. Roger Baldwin later fondly recalled their partnership: <blockquote>We made a team which was never after equalled in the American Civil Liberties Union. DeSilver contributed the quick unerring judgment, with a gay and easy approach to tough problems; Nelles, the reflective opinions of a studious lawyer sometimes aroused by hot indignations; and I, the techniques of the [[social worker|social case worker]], an organizer and a publicity man for such limited publicity as was open to us.<ref name=Quote>Quoted in Cottrell, ''Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union,'' pg. 123.</ref></blockquote> The three men "loved each other," Lucille B. Milner, secretary of the NCLB remembered.<ref name=Quote /> The team was abruptly shattered when DeSilver was killed in a fall from a railroad car in 1924, dying at the age of 36.<ref>Cottrell, ''Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union,'' pg. 123.</ref> Nelles later memorialized his fallen colleague by writing his biography, published by [[W.W. Norton & Co.]] in 1940.<ref>See: Walter Nelles, ''A Liberal in Wartime: The Education of Albert DeSilver.'' New York: W.W. Norton, 1940.</ref>
Walter Nelles died at the age of 53 on April 1, 1937 in [[New Haven, Connecticut]] following a brief illness. Nelles is the great grandfather of Amanda Pedersen Norton, a Washington, DC attorney and former chief mediator for the US [[Food and Drug Administration]], as well as great grandfather of Leif Pedersen Diaz a network television producer and correspondent.<ref>[http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0E15F63E5A157A93C3A9178FD85F438385F9&scp=1&sq=%22walter+nelles%22&st=p "Prof. Walter Nelles of Yale Law School: An Expert on Labor Injunction and Former Lawyer Here is Dead at Age of 53."] ''New York Times,'' April 1, 1937.</ref>


==See also==
===Academic career===


Nelles later served on the faculty of [[Yale Law School]] where he often taught courses on the history of labor [[injunction]]s.
* [[American Civil Liberties Union]]
* [[Roger Baldwin]]
* [[Carol Weiss King]]


==Personal life and death==
==Footnotes==

{{reflist|2}}
Nelles was a [[social democrat]] and a member of the [[League for Industrial Democracy]] during the 1920s.<ref name=ALWW /> At the time of his death he was regarded by friends as a [[modern liberalism in the United States|liberal]] rather than a [[socialism|socialist]].<ref name=Meyers />

Walter Nelles died at the age of 53 on April 1, 1937, in [[New Haven, Connecticut]], following a brief illness.<ref name=NYTobit />


==Works==
==Works==

===Books and pamphlets===
===Books and pamphlets===


* ''Espionage Act Cases, with Certain Others on Related Points: New Law in Making as to Criminal Utterance in War-time.'' New York: National Civil Liberties Bureau, 1918.
* ''Espionage Act Cases, with Certain Others on Related Points: New Law in Making as to Criminal Utterance in War-time'' (1918)<ref>
{{cite book
* ''Seeing Red: Civil Liberty and Law in the Period Following the War.'' New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 1920.
| editor = Walter Nelles
* ''A Liberal in Wartime: The Education of Albert DeSilver.'' New York: W.W. Norton, 1940.
| editor-link = Walter Nelles
| title = Espionage Act Cases, with Certain Others on Related Points: New Law in Making as to Criminal Utterance in War-time
| publisher = National Civil Liberties Bureau
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=hQ42AAAAMAAJ
| date = 1918
| access-date = 10 March 2024}}</ref>
* ''Seeing Red: Civil Liberty and Law in the Period Following the War'' (1920)<ref>
{{cite book
| author = Walter Nelles
| author-link = Walter Nelles
| title = Seeing Red: Civil Liberty and Law in the Period Following the War

| publisher = American Civil Liberties Union
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=m6gyAQAAMAAJ
| date = 1920
| access-date = 10 March 2024}}</ref>
* ''A Liberal in Wartime: The Education of [[Albert DeSilver]]'' (1940)<ref>
{{cite book
| author = Walter Nelles
| author-link = Walter Nelles
| title = A Liberal in Wartime: The Education of Albert DeSilver
| publisher = WW Norton
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=_z9EAAAAIAAJ
| date = 1940
| access-date = 10 March 2024}}</ref>


===Articles===
===Articles===


* "Contempt by Publication in the United States," Part One: ''Columbia Law Review,'' vol. 28, no. 4 (April 1928), pp. 401-431; Part Two: vol. 28, no. 5 (May 1928) pp. 525-562. With Carol Weiss King. <small>—Reissued as a pamphlet by the ACLU.</small>
* "Contempt by Publication in the United States," Part One: ''Columbia Law Review,'' vol. 28, no. 4 (April 1928), pp.&nbsp;401–431; Part Two: vol. 28, no. 5 (May 1928) pp.&nbsp;525–562. With Carol Weiss King. <small>—Reissued as a pamphlet by the ACLU.</small>
* "A Strike and its Legal Consequences: An Examination of the Receivership Precedent for the Labor Injunction," ''Yale Law Journal,'' vol. v. 40, no. 4 (February 1931), pp. 507-554.
* "A Strike and its Legal Consequences: An Examination of the Receivership Precedent for the Labor Injunction," ''Yale Law Journal,'' vol. v. 40, no. 4 (February 1931), pp.&nbsp;507–554.
* "The Summary Power to Punish for Contempt," ''Columbia Law Review,'' vol. 31, no. 6 (June 1931), pp. 956-974.
* "The Summary Power to Punish for Contempt," ''Columbia Law Review,'' vol. 31, no. 6 (June 1931), pp.&nbsp;956–974.
* "The First American Labor Case," ''Yale Law Journal,''vol. 41, no. 2 (December 1931), pp. 165-200.
* "The First American Labor Case," ''Yale Law Journal,''vol. 41, no. 2 (December 1931), pp.&nbsp;165–200.
* "Commonwealth v. Hunt," ''Columbia Law Review,''vol. 32, no. 7 (November 1932), pp. 1128-1169.
* "Commonwealth v. Hunt," ''Columbia Law Review,''vol. 32, no. 7 (November 1932), pp.&nbsp;1128–1169.
* "Towards Legal Understanding," ''Columbia Law Review,'' Part One: vol. 34, no. 5 (May 1934), pp. 862-889; Part Two: vol. 34, no. 6 (June 1934), pp. 1041-1075.
* "Towards Legal Understanding," ''Columbia Law Review,'' Part One: vol. 34, no. 5 (May 1934), pp.&nbsp;862–889; Part Two: vol. 34, no. 6 (June 1934), pp.&nbsp;1041–1075.

==See also==

* [[American Civil Liberties Union]]
* [[Roger Nash Baldwin|Roger Baldwin]]
* [[Swinburne Hale]]
* [[Isaac Shorr]]
* [[Carol Weiss King]]
* [[Joseph R. Brodsky]]

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

==External sources==


* Norman L. Meyers, [https://www.jstor.org/pss/792154 "Walter Nelles,"] ''Yale Law Journal,'' vol. 46, no. 8 (June 1937), pp.&nbsp;1279–1281.
==Further reading==


{{ACLU}}
* Norman L. Meyers, [http://www.jstor.org/pss/792154 "Walter Nelles,"] ''Yale Law Journal,'' vol. 46, no. 8 (June 1937), pp. 1279-1281.
{{Authority control}}


{{Persondata <!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]]. -->
| NAME = Nelles, Walter
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
| SHORT DESCRIPTION =
| DATE OF BIRTH = 1883
| PLACE OF BIRTH = Leavenworth, Kansas
| DATE OF DEATH = 1937
| PLACE OF DEATH = New Haven, Connecticut
}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nelles, Walter}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nelles, Walter}}
[[Category:1883 births]]
[[Category:1883 births]]
[[Category:1937 deaths]]
[[Category:1937 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Leavenworth, Kansas]]
[[Category:Phillips Exeter Academy alumni]]
[[Category:Phillips Exeter Academy alumni]]
[[Category:Harvard Law School alumni]]
[[Category:Harvard Law School alumni]]
[[Category:Yale University faculty]]
[[Category:Yale Law School faculty]]
[[Category:American lawyers]]
[[Category:20th-century American lawyers]]
[[Category:American pacifists]]
[[Category:American pacifists]]
[[Category:American Civil Liberties Union people]]

Latest revision as of 17:52, 10 March 2024

Walter Nelles (April 21, 1883 – April 1, 1937) was an American lawyer and law professor. Nelles is best remembered as the co-founder and first chief legal counsel of the National Civil Liberties Bureau and its successor, the American Civil Liberties Union. In this connection, Nelles achieved public notice for his legal work on behalf of pacifists charged with violating the Espionage Act during World War I and in other politically charged civil rights and constitutional law cases in later years.[1]

Background

[edit]

Walter Nelles was born April 21, 1883, in Leavenworth, Kansas, the son of George Thomas Nelles, a civil engineer.[2] Nelles attended the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, in preparation for an Ivy League collegiate education.[2] Upon graduation from Exeter, Nelles enrolled in Harvard University, from which he graduated in 1905 with a Bachelor's degree.[2]

After graduation, Nelles taught as an instructor at the University of Wisconsin from the fall of 1905 to the spring of 1907.[2] Nelles then left Madison to return to Harvard, receiving a Master's degree in 1908 before moving on Harvard Law School.[2] He graduated from Harvard Law with an LL.B. in 1911.[2] During the period of his graduate education, Nelles also taught as an instructor at Lowell Institute and Radcliffe College.[2]

Career

[edit]

After passing the bar examination, Nelles entered private legal practice.

Law practice

[edit]

During World War I, Nelles was a partner in the law firm of Hale, Nelles & Shorr.

Nelles defended Communist Party co-founder Benjamin Gitlow for half a decade. In 1920, Nelles and Murray C. Bernay served of counsel to defend Gitlow in People vs. Gitlow on behalf of the National Civil Liberties Bureau (soon renamed the American Civil Liberties Union or ACLU), then Nelles and Charles Recht on appeal.[3][4] From 1923 to 1925 on behalf of the ACLU, Nelles and a young Walter Pollak argued Gitlow v. New York before the United States Supreme Court against a conviction for "advocacy of criminal anarchy."[5] The court upheld Gitlow's conviction but recognized that the due process clause of the 14th Amendment incorporated, which protected fundamental provisions of the Bill of Rights, including the freedom of speech. (New York State Governor Al Smith commuted Gitlow's sentence.)[6]

Throughout the 1920s, Nelles participated in a loose partnership of left-wing attorneys, including Joseph R. Brodsky, Swinburne Hale, Carol Weiss King, and Isaac Shorr.[7] The firm support legal investigations published in the 67-page Report upon the Illegal Practices of the United States Department of Justice by the National Popular Government League (NGPL); Swinburne Hale did a majority of the work on the report.[8]

In 1920, Nelles served on the defense team of the five Socialist members of the New York State Assembly who were denied the right to assume the seats to which they had been elected by the Republican Speaker of the House Thaddeus C. Sweet, working in concert with members of both the Republican and Democratic Parties.[2]

The liberal Nelles also sought to mediate sectarian fighting among American radicals, sitting with Roger Baldwin and others on a special committee established in August 1922 to investigate charges levied by Abraham Cahan and The Jewish Daily Forward that the Friends of Soviet Russia (FSR) organization (for which he served as attorney[9]) was engaged in the misappropriation of funds raised for the relief of famine in Soviet Russia.[10] The committee ultimately exonerated the FSR of these charges, but Nelles declined to sign the final report because he was appointed as a law partner as counsel for that organization, a circumstance that created a potential conflict of interest.[10]

In 1924, Nelles and Shorr appealed United States ex rel. Tisi v. Tod (1924) and United States ex rel. Mensevich v. Tod before the U.S. Supreme Court.[11][12]

American Civil Liberties Union

[edit]

Shorr and Nelles served as counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).[8]

Holding pacifist beliefs himself,[13] following the entry of the United States into World War I in April 1917 Nelles was persuaded by his old college classmate Roger Baldwin to leave his practice to become house counsel for the fledgling National Civil Liberties Bureau (NCLB) of the American Union Against Militarism that Baldwin had helped launch.[14] This organization, based in New York City, would eventually emerge as the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Civil Liberties Bureau in its first years dealt primarily with cases involving conscientious objectors and political opponents of the war who faced charges under the so-called Espionage Act. Among those high-profile cases which Nelles handled included the trial of the American Socialist Society and its Rand School of Social Science and the trial of Max Eastman and his publication, The Masses.[2]

The offices of the National Civil Liberties Bureau were raided by the Department of Justice on August 30, 1918, by agents who seized all of Nelles' files.[15] The raid was based upon invalid search warrants.

Nelles and Baldwin were joined in the main office of the National Civil Liberties Bureau by Albert DeSilver, a lawyer who left private practice to work full-time on the defense of civil liberties in the courts.[16] The troika guided the activities of the NCLB and the successor ACLU in its earliest years. Roger Baldwin later fondly recalled their partnership:

We made a team which was never after equalled in the American Civil Liberties Union. DeSilver contributed the quick unerring judgment, with a gay and easy approach to tough problems; Nelles, the reflective opinions of a studious lawyer sometimes aroused by hot indignations; and I, the techniques of the social case worker, an organizer and a publicity man for such limited publicity as was open to us.[17]

The three men "loved each other," Lucille B. Milner, secretary of the NCLB remembered.[17] The team was abruptly shattered when DeSilver was killed in a fall from a railroad car in 1924, dying at the age of 36.[18] Nelles later memorialized his fallen colleague by writing his biography, published by W.W. Norton & Co. in 1940.[19]

Academic career

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Nelles later served on the faculty of Yale Law School where he often taught courses on the history of labor injunctions.

Personal life and death

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Nelles was a social democrat and a member of the League for Industrial Democracy during the 1920s.[2] At the time of his death he was regarded by friends as a liberal rather than a socialist.[13]

Walter Nelles died at the age of 53 on April 1, 1937, in New Haven, Connecticut, following a brief illness.[1]

Works

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Books and pamphlets

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  • Espionage Act Cases, with Certain Others on Related Points: New Law in Making as to Criminal Utterance in War-time (1918)[20]
  • Seeing Red: Civil Liberty and Law in the Period Following the War (1920)[21]
  • A Liberal in Wartime: The Education of Albert DeSilver (1940)[22]

Articles

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  • "Contempt by Publication in the United States," Part One: Columbia Law Review, vol. 28, no. 4 (April 1928), pp. 401–431; Part Two: vol. 28, no. 5 (May 1928) pp. 525–562. With Carol Weiss King. —Reissued as a pamphlet by the ACLU.
  • "A Strike and its Legal Consequences: An Examination of the Receivership Precedent for the Labor Injunction," Yale Law Journal, vol. v. 40, no. 4 (February 1931), pp. 507–554.
  • "The Summary Power to Punish for Contempt," Columbia Law Review, vol. 31, no. 6 (June 1931), pp. 956–974.
  • "The First American Labor Case," Yale Law Journal,vol. 41, no. 2 (December 1931), pp. 165–200.
  • "Commonwealth v. Hunt," Columbia Law Review,vol. 32, no. 7 (November 1932), pp. 1128–1169.
  • "Towards Legal Understanding," Columbia Law Review, Part One: vol. 34, no. 5 (May 1934), pp. 862–889; Part Two: vol. 34, no. 6 (June 1934), pp. 1041–1075.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "Prof. Walter Nelles of Yale Law School: An Expert on Labor Injunction and Former Lawyer Here is Dead at Age of 53". New York Times. 1 April 1937. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Solon DeLeon with Irma C. Hayssen and Grace Poole (eds.), The American Labor Who's Who. New York: Hanford Press, 1925; pg. 170.
  3. ^ Michael Hannon (2010). "The People v. Benjamin Gitlow (1920)" (PDF). University of Minnesota - Law Library. pp. 8, 15. Retrieved 12 December 2023.
  4. ^ "People v. Gitlow". Case Text. 1 April 1921. Retrieved 12 December 2023.
  5. ^ "Gitlow v. People of the State of New York". Cornell - Legal Information Institute. 8 June 1925. Retrieved 12 December 2023.
  6. ^ Pollak, Louis H. (2009). "Pollak, Walter Heilprin (1887–1941)". In Newman, Roger K. (ed.). The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law. Yale University Press. p. 430. ISBN 978-0300113006. Retrieved 2 December 2017.
  7. ^ "Carol Weiss King, 1895-1952," Jewish Women Encyclopedia, Jewish Women Archive, jwa.org/
  8. ^ a b Smith, Donald L. (1986). Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Defender of Liberty and Law. Harvard University Press. p. 48. ISBN 9780674966857. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  9. ^ Baldwin, Roger N. (1 November 1922). "Report of the Investigating Committee of Five: To the Friends of Soviet Russia" (PDF). Soviet Russia. Friends of Soviet Russia: 238. Retrieved 8 April 2021.
  10. ^ a b Cottrell, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union, pg. 171.
  11. ^ "United States ex rel. Tisi v. Tod". Wikisource. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  12. ^ "United States ex rel. Mensevich v. Tod". Wikisource. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  13. ^ a b Norman L. Meyers, "Walter Nelles," Yale Law Journal, vol. 46, no. 8 (June 1937), pg. 1279.
  14. ^ Roger C. Cottrell, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001; pp. 53, 57.
  15. ^ Edgar B. Speer, "Roger Baldwin and The ACLU: Excerpt of a Report by a Former Special Agent of the Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice, May 3rd, 1920." Corvallis, OR: 1000 Flowers Publishing, 2007.
  16. ^ Cottrell, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union, pg. 57.
  17. ^ a b Quoted in Cottrell, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union, pg. 123.
  18. ^ Cottrell, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union, pg. 123.
  19. ^ See: Walter Nelles, A Liberal in Wartime: The Education of Albert DeSilver. New York: W.W. Norton, 1940.
  20. ^ Walter Nelles, ed. (1918). Espionage Act Cases, with Certain Others on Related Points: New Law in Making as to Criminal Utterance in War-time. National Civil Liberties Bureau. Retrieved 10 March 2024.
  21. ^ Walter Nelles (1920). Seeing Red: Civil Liberty and Law in the Period Following the War. American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved 10 March 2024.
  22. ^ Walter Nelles (1940). A Liberal in Wartime: The Education of Albert DeSilver. WW Norton. Retrieved 10 March 2024.

External sources

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  • Norman L. Meyers, "Walter Nelles," Yale Law Journal, vol. 46, no. 8 (June 1937), pp. 1279–1281.
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