Background

Arthur T. Vanderbilt was born on July 7, 1888, in Newark, Ne2w Jersey. He was the son of Lewis Vanderbilt, a railway executive, and Alice H. Leach.

Education

Vanderbilt attended Wesleyan University, obtaining the B. A. in 1910, and then Columbia Law School, where he received the LL. B. in 1912.

Career

Vanderbilt opened his own law office in Newark in 1915 and maintained a practice there for the next thirty-two years. He established a reputation as an extremely capable attorney, a "lawyer's lawyer, " whom others often brought in as counsel to a case. He also became involved in government reform, teaching, and professional activities within the bar. Active in Republican politics, Vanderbilt became president of the Essex County Republican League in 1919 and from that base fought the political machine of Jersey City boss Frank Hague.

In 1938, he represented the American Bar Association when that organization intervened in a civil liberties case in the U. S. Court of Appeals. Norman Thomas, the Socialist leader, had been barred from speaking in Jersey City under a Hague ordinance severely restricting public gatherings and had sued to have the measure declared unconstitutional. Although the New Jersey state courts upheld the statute, the federal courts ultimately found it in violation of constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and assembly.

Vanderbilt began teaching at the New York University (NYU) Law School in 1914 and rose to full professor by 1919. In 1943, he was chosen as dean of the school, a position he held until 1948. He became a nationally recognized expert on judicial administration and reform. He wrote or edited several volumes on legal administration.

His philosophy of court reform was best summed up in his William H. White Lectures at the University of Virginia, published as The Challenge of Law Reform (1955). There he argued somewhat hyperbolically that criminals, gangsters, and corrupt officials were no more dangerous to their communities than judges and lawyers who clung to outmoded legal procedures and fought against any and all changes in procedural law and administration because they were comfortable with the established way of doing things. Vanderbilt's concern with judicial reform was far from academic. He chaired the New Jersey Judicial Council (1930 - 1940), the National Conference of Judicial Councils (1933 - 1937), and the U. S. attorney general's commission on administrative procedures (1938 - 1939). He secured the creation of the Office of Administrative Director of the Federal Courts. Elected president of the American Bar Association in 1937, he led that group's campaign for reform of the federal court system.

From 1938 to 1946, he chaired the advisory committee to the U. S. Supreme Court on federal rules of criminal procedure, and he played a major role in the reorganization of the federal courts initiated by the Supreme Court and the attorney general's office. While dean of NYU Law School, he established the Law Center Forum, where judges and attorneys could meet with scholars, businessmen, and labor leaders to work on common problems related to the courts. Vanderbilt's greatest opportunity to effect court reform came in September 1948, when he took up his duties as chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, after having served as a judge of the circuit court since the previous November. He now resigned from NYU Law School and from his practice and devoted all his time and energy to overhauling New Jersey's antiquated court system, one of the worst in the nation.

Vanderbilt died of a massive heart attack on his way to work.

Achievements

• Arthur T. Vanderbilt was the first Chief Justice under the revamped New Jersey court system established by the Constitution of 1947, in which the Supreme Court replaced the old Court of Errors and Appeals as the highest court. As chief justice, Vanderbilt instituted an annual national conference of judges, lawyers, and legislators to review and revise court procedures in order to make them more flexible and less technical. Vanderbilt's campaign proved extremely effective. He reduced the different types of New Jersey courts from seventeen to seven and cut the waiting time on cases significantly. Much of his success was made possible by New Jersey's new state constitution, which was adopted in 1947 and in the drafting of which Vanderbilt had played a major role. His activities were also winning him increased national recognition, and there was talk that he was in line for nomination to the U. S. Supreme Court. He also was an attorney, legal educator and proponent of court modernization. For his work in law reform, he was awarded 32 honorary degrees and the American Bar Association Medal.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt

    ( Wall Street Journal Bestseller For fans of Downton Abb...)

  • The Soul of a House: Adventures in Building an Antique Retirement Account

    (Antiques aren't for everyone but Arthur Vanderbilt's enth...)

  • Gardening in Eden: Seasons in a Suburban Garden

    ("Though an old man," Thomas Jefferson wrote at Monticello...)

  • Changing Law a Biography of Arthur t Vanderbilt

    (Book by Vanderbilit, A.)

  • Order in the courts: A biography of Arthur T. Vanderbilt

Views

Vanderbilt recognized that courts constituted a big business and insisted that they should be run with efficient, businesslike methods. Every case should be handled promptly and on its merits, he asserted, rather than on the basis of procedural technicalities. He worked hard to upgrade the lowest courts, especially the municipal courts, because they were closest to the people and because if a case were heard properly and efficiently there, it would help clear away the backlog clogging the appellate courts.

Vanderbilt also recognized that no legal reform could succeed unless the people understood the arguments and supported the proposed measures. As chief justice indeed, for many years before he carried this message to the people in numerous speeches and articles; one of the last pieces he wrote warned that no matter how great the need for judicial reform, it could only succeed through an aroused public opinion.

Quotations: “For the Vanderbilts lived in a day when flaunting one’s money was not only accepted but celebrated. What may have started as playacting, as dressing up as dukes and princesses for fancy dress balls in fairytale palaces, soon developed into a firm conviction that they were indeed the new American nobility. ”

“GENTLEMEN You have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue you, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you. C. Vanderbilt”

“If ever Scott Fitzgerald needed evidence to substantiate his aphorism that “the very rich…are different from you and me, ” it was here in spades in this portrait gallery of extravagant crazies that is the unique saga of the Vanderbilt family. ”

“The secret of my success is this: I never tell what I am going to do till I have done it. ”

“A dinner invitation once accepted is a sacred obligation. If you die before the dinner takes place, your executor must attend. ”

“In the hidden reaches where memory probes lie sorrows too deep to fathom. ”

Connections

Vanderbilt married Florence Josephine Althen in Newark on September 12, 1914. They had five children.

Father:

Lewis Vanderbilt

18 March 1861 - 29 December 1934

Mother:

Alice H. Leach Vanderbilt

28 July 1862 - 22 August 1945

Grandson:

Arthur T. Vanderbilt, II

Is an attorney, author, avid gardener, partner in a New Jersey law firm, and former deputy attorney general of New Jersey.

Wife:

Florence J. Althen

Daughter:

Virginia Vanderbilt

Daughter:

Jean Vanderbilt

Son:

William Vanderbilt

Son:

Robert Vanderbilt

Son:

Lois Vanderbilt