Background
Ernest Angell was born on June 1, 1889 in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, one of two children born to Elgin Adelbert Angell, a lawyer, and Lily Curtis.
( The Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records an...)
The Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978 contains the world's most comprehensive collection of records and briefs brought before the nation's highest court by leading legal practitioners - many who later became judges and associates of the court. It includes transcripts, applications for review, motions, petitions, supplements and other official papers of the most-studied and talked-about cases, including many that resulted in landmark decisions. This collection serves the needs of students and researchers in American legal history, politics, society and government, as well as practicing attorneys. This book contains copies of all known US Supreme Court filings related to this case including any transcripts of record, briefs, petitions, motions, jurisdictional statements, and memorandum filed. This book does not contain the Court's opinion. The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping ensure edition identification: Dale E. Noyd, Petitioner, v. Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense, et al. Petition / ERNEST ANGELL / 1967 / 722 / 389 U.S. 1022 / 88 S.Ct. 593 / 19 L.Ed.2d 667 / 10-13-1967 Dale E. Noyd, Petitioner, v. Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense, et al. Amicus Brief (P) / HERMAN SCHWARTZ / 1967 / 722 / 389 U.S. 1022 / 88 S.Ct. 593 / 19 L.Ed.2d 667 / 10-30-1967 Dale E. Noyd, Petitioner, v. Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense, et al. Supplemental Brief (P) / ERNEST ANGELL / 1967 / 722 / 389 U.S. 1022 / 88 S.Ct. 593 / 19 L.Ed.2d 667 / 11-30-1967 Dale E. Noyd, Petitioner, v. Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense, et al. Memorandum (P) / ERWIN N GRISWOLD / 1967 / 722 / 389 U.S. 1022 / 88 S.Ct. 593 / 19 L.Ed.2d 667 / 11-15-1967
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Ernest Angell was born on June 1, 1889 in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, one of two children born to Elgin Adelbert Angell, a lawyer, and Lily Curtis.
He attended University School in Cleveland, and after graduating in 1907, he attended Harvard College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
He graduated in 1911 and two years later received an LL. B. degree from Harvard Law School.
Angell was appointed New York regional director of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1936, serving under Joseph P. Kennedy, who was then its chairman. He had a principal role in the criminal investigation of Richard Whitney, president of the New York Stock Exchange. Two years later he resumed the practice of corporate and litigation law with the New York firm of Harden, Hess and Eder. His main association during his long career was as a partner in the Wall Street firm of Spence, Windels, Walser and Hotchkiss.
As a Republican with strong establishment, Wall Street, and social connections, Angell was an unusual figure in the leadership of the American Civil Liberties Union, which he had joined in the 1920's. He saw the ACLU as an instrument for the protection and expansion of civil liberties through the formal pursuit of legal remedies in court, and he opposed efforts to involve the ACLU in political, public relations, and lobbying efforts in behalf of a wide range of controversial causes. He believed that the ACLU's prestige, influence, and success lay in the fervent appeal to principle, not partisanship, and he resisted identification of the organization as an appendage of the Democratic party. As a lawyer with fundamentally conservative personal values and moderate political views, Angell believed that the ACLU should champion only causes involving conventional constitutional doctrine derived from the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Roger Baldwin, the founder and preeminent figure in the history of the ACLU, selected Angell for membership on its board in the late 1930's, at a decisive point in the fortunes of the organization. The Hitler-Stalin pact had caused a division in the ranks, and Corliss Lamont, an avowed Marxist and the most leftist of the members of the board, aggressively opposed a resolution barring anyone holding totalitarian views from membership in the ACLU.
The resolution carried, effectively expelling members of the Communist party. The elevation of Angell to the chairmanship in 1950 blunted conservative attacks on the ACLU. The ACLU had a strong record in support of pacifism, dating back to World War I. Angell, who was a member of the American Legion, argued that the ACLU should not oppose the draft, and it did not, although it sought to broaden the definition of conscientious objector status, beyond conventional religious conviction and belief, to include political grounds as a basis for excuse from service. Angell was welcomed to the White House by President Franklin Roosevelt, who heard his views on the matter but declined to alter government policy. The ACLU did not pursue the matter, and far greater numbers, proportionally, of asserted pacifists went to prison in World War II for refusing induction than had gone in World War I.
In 1941, when the director of Selective Service, Lewis Hershey, ordered local boards to draft wildcat strikers employed in defense plants, on the ground that the strikes had been instigated by Communists to undermine national security, Angell informally persuaded the attorney general to modify the government's program. Angell also sought to convince officials in the War Department of the profound inequity and offensiveness of segregation in the armed services, efforts that were unavailing. The ACLU publicly urged an end to segregation in the services, but the war crisis was not conducive to confronting the issue in other than the most limited and technical of lawsuits.
In 1940, Congress had passed the Smith Act (the Alien Registration Act), which authorized criminal prosecution of members of the Communist party. After convictions under the act were upheld by the Supreme Court in the Dennis case (1951), Angell urged the attorney general to prosecute under the act only those who could be shown to have personally participated in a definitive criminal conspiracy rather than simply being members of the Communist party. In the 1960's two events profoundly changed the ACLU. Angell adhered resolutely to his position that the ACLU should not involve itself in political matters, notably the debate relating to public policy and the Vietnam War. It was his view that the lack of a formal declaration of war and the anti-civil liberties consequences of the war, such as broad police intelligence intrusions and the breakup of antiwar demonstrations on campuses and elsewhere, were appropriate concerns of the ACLU.
He opposed, however, direct intervention by the ACLU in the court defense of indicted opponents of the war, such as Dr. Benjamin Spock and others. Angell instituted a major reform of the ACLU, over the violent opposition of the radical faction of the board. The board was enlarged to give voice to the affiliate civil liberties organizations in states and cities across the nation, thereby nationalizing and democratizing the organization and stabilizing the ACLU's policy council. It provided the basis for a dramatic increase in membership and financial support, and led to a new era of expanded national prestige.
Angell was the author of Supreme Court Primer (1937), a brief, general outline of the Court's functions, and Les Aspects constitutionnels des libertés publiques aux États-Unis (1964). He also edited The Rule of Law in the United States.
Angell died in New York City.
( The Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records an...)
For the rest of his life Angell remained a Republican with moderate political views.
He married Katharine Sergeant in 1915; they had two children and were divorced in 1929.
Elizabeth Brosius Higgins, whom he married in 1939, died in 1970; they had two children.
