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James Clark McReynolds was one of the four conservative Justices, known as the "Four Horsemen,"1 famous for their opposition to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal which spurred Roosevelt's "court packing" proposal in 1937.2 His critics described McReynolds as "intolerably rude," "crustiest of the conservatives," and "fuller of prejudice than any man I have ever known."3
McReynolds was born in Elkton, Kentucky, on February 3, 1862, of Scotch-Irish descent, the son of Dr. John Oliver and Ellen (Reeves) McReynolds. His parents were both members of the fundamentalist Campbellite sect of the Disciples of Christ Church and insisted upon a strict moral upbringing for their family. His father was a noted surgeon and wealthy plantation owner whose nickname in the community was "pope" because of his domineering and snobbish nature.4
McReynolds was graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1882 as valedictorian in a class of almost a hundred, receiving the Founder's Gold Medal and a Bachelor of Science degree. He received his law degree in 1884 from the University of Virginia after only fourteen months of study. Except for two years spent in Washington as secretary to Senator (later Supreme Court Justice) Howell E. Jackson of Tennessee, McReynolds practiced law in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1884 to 1903.5 In 1900, he was appointed Professor of Commercial Law, Insurance, and Corporations at Vanderbilt Law School.6
McReynolds first foray into politics and public life was in 1886 when he mounted an unsuccessful campaign for a seat in Congress, running as a "Gold Democrat"7 with substantial Republican support. Despite his affiliation with the Democratic party, McReynolds was appointed assistant attorney general of the United States in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt. After three and a half years, he left the Justice Department for private practice with the New York law firm of Cravath, Henderson & deGersdorff.8
Shortly thereafter, he returned to the Justice Department as Special Assistant to the Attorney General and participated in some of the most important antitrust litigation of the period including the America Tobacco Company9 case. He quickly established a reputation as a trust buster although he also handled immigration and inheritance taxation cases. He resigned in 1909, but President William Howard Taft called him back to Washington to help in the final dissolution of the tobacco trust and the anthracite coal trust cases. In January, 1912, McReynolds again resigned after Attorney General George W. Wickersham compromised on the final settlement of the tobacco case. He resumed private practice with Cravath, Henderson & deGersdorff.10
When Woodrow Wilson became president in 1913, he appointed McReynolds as Attorney General to succeed Wickersham. As head of the Department of Justice, McReynolds vigorously prosecuted pending antitrust cases and instituted a number of new ones. Among the most noteworthy decrees entered during his service were those dissolving the Union Pacific-Southern Pacific railroad merger, requiring the American Telephone & Telegraph Company to relinquish its monopoly of wire communication, prohibiting the Elgin (Ill.) Board of Trade from continuing its price-fixing practices, dissolving the United States Thread Association, restraining the National Wholesale Jewelers' Association from maintaining a conspiracy in restraint of trade, and requiring the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Company to relinquish its monopoly of New England transportation facilities.11
McReynolds's tenure in Wilson's cabinet was brief and stormy. Controversies arose over unsubstantiated reports that the Justice Department was spying on federal judges and that the cost of the new Justice building far exceeded all reasonable estimates. The most damaging accusations involved McReynolds's attempts to delay prosecution of the son-in-law of a high government official accused of violating the Mann Act.12 Although his intent in these matters were above suspicion, McReynolds's violent temper and abrasive nature in dealing with the accusations alienated Congress and caused President Wilson considerable embarrassment. The unfilled vacancy on the Supreme Court created by the death of Justice Horace H. Lurton gave Wilson the perfect opportunity to elevate McReynolds to the Court, thereby demonstrating his support for his attorney general and at the same time putting an end to McReynolds's political difficulties.13
On August 19, 1914, President Wilson nominated McReynolds Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was confirmed by the Senate on August 29, 1914. Although McReynolds took the oath of office on September 3, he did not take his seat on the bench until the opening of the following October term. From 1937 through 1941, Justice McReynolds dissented 119 times. During his twenty-six years on the bench, he recorded a record number of 310 dissents. He voted against more New Deal legislation than any other Justice on the Court.14
McReynolds is probably best remembered as one of the "Four Horsemen," so called because they consistently voted against New Deal legislation such as the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933,15 the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933,16 and the Bituminous Coal Act of 1935.17
Among the representative majority opinions which he wrote was Meyer v. State of Nebraska, which invalidated a state law prohibiting the teaching of any foreign language before the ninth grade and affirmed the right of parents to direct the education of their children under the 14th Amendment.18 He also wrote the majority opinion in Gilchrist et. al., Constituting the Transit Commission et. al. v. Interborough Rapid Transit Co. et. al., which preserved the five-cent subway fare in New York City,19 and St. Louis & O'Fallon Railroad Company, et. al. v. United States, which directed the Interstate Commerce Commission to give weight to current prices in determining the value of railroad properties, as authorized by the Transportation Act of 1918.20
McReynolds became a dissenting voice on the Court, protesting what he considered to be unconstitutional exercises of power by the federal government. For example, in Stewart Machine Co. v. Davis, he dissented from a decision of the Court upholding the Social Security Act, saying, "I can not find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States."21 McReynolds particularly opposed the brandishing of executive power. In Myers v. United States, he wrote a seventy-page dissent blasting the President's right to dismiss a postmaster without congressional approval, saying that members of all administrative boards and commissions would be "subject to the President's pleasure or caprice."22
As a person, McReynolds was often rude, impatient, and sarcastic. He detested tobacco and prohibited others from smoking in his presence. His attitudes toward women, especially female attorneys, were likewise intolerant.23 Perhaps one of his least enduring characteristics was his thoroughgoing anti-Semitism, which prevented him from being civil to his Jewish brethren, Justices Brandeis and Cardozo. Yet McReynolds was known to be kind to the pages who worked at the Court and was especially sympathetic to children. Perhaps nothing illustrated McReynolds' charity toward children as much as his generous support of thirty-three young victims of the German bombardment of England in 1941. He also pledged the first $10,000 in the initial Save the Children Campaign of $10,000,000. McReynolds left the bulk of his estate to charities, among them the Children's Hospital in Washington, D.C., the Salvation Army, the Washington National City Christian Church, Vanderbilt University, the University of Virginia, Centre College and other educational and charitable institutions. Despite his love of children, McReynolds remained a lifelong bachelor.24
Embittered by his growing isolation on the Court and Roosevelt's re-election, McReynolds announced his retirement on February 1, 1941, saying, "any country that elects Roosevelt three times deserves no protection."25 He died August 24, 1946, at a Washington hospital after a bout of bronchial pneumonia. He was buried in the family plot at Glenwood Cemetery in Elkton, Kentucky.26
At memorial exercises following the death of Justice McReynolds, a resolution presented by a committee chaired by former Associate Justice James F. Byrnes, recounted:
He served over a quarter of a century on the Supreme Court: through World War I, through the following great depression, through the era of the vast expansion of Federal power, through the dramatic and historic attack by the Executive on the Judiciary, and through a period in which, ironically enough, he succeeded Louis Dembitz Brandeis as "the Great Dissenter." He held on with grim determination after the times had turned against his views and retired just two days before his seventy-ninth birthday. He presents the paradox of having come to the Court as a much-vaunted, antitrust liberal and of having left it as the most die-hard representative of the conservative wing. Yet a careful study of his opinions throughout the quarter-century will disclose a pattern of inflexible and unyielding consistency. It was not James Clark McReynolds who changed. It was the times, the country, the prevailing constitutional views and the Supreme Court that changed. Justice McReynolds remained standing in his place, like a granite mountain.27
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