Morgan Joseph O'Brien was born on April 28, 1852, on New York City's lower East Side, United States, one of six children and third of four sons of Morgan Joseph and Mary Ann (Burke) O'Brien. His father, a native of Pallas, County Limerick, had emigrated from Ireland to the United States some thirty years earlier and become a successful cattle merchant.
Young O'Brien attended New York public schools and went on to receive an A. B. degree from St. John's College (later Fordham University) in 1872, an M. A. from St. Francis Xavier College, New York, in 1873, and an LL. B. from the Columbia Law School in 1875.
Commencing the practice of law in the last year of his studying at the Columbia Law School, Morgan O'Brien soon specialized in corporation and commercial law, particularly in civil cases involving New York City as a municipal entity. He also took part in politics, at first as a strong partisan of Tammany Hall, an allegiance growing out of the friendship between his father and Boss John Kelly. But O'Brien early betrayed qualities of independence. In 1882, as a member of the platform committee of the state Democratic convention, he succeeded in introducing a civil service plank into the party program - an important aid to Grover Cleveland's campaign for the governorship that year. This same independence made O'Brien the only Tammanyite to whom Mayor Abram S. Hewitt of New York would offer an appointment when he took office in 1887.
Though loath to abandon his successful law practice, O'Brien accepted the position of city corporation counsel on July 1. His tenure, however, was brief, for later in 1887 he was elected a justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York. Still only thirty-five, he was the youngest person yet to sit on this court. O'Brien's major reputation was made as a jurist. From 1888 to 1892 he served on the supreme court's trial division, establishing, particularly in dealing with a set of disputed upstate election cases in 1891, a reputation for fairness that transcended partisanship.
O'Brien was appointed by Democratic Governor David B. Hill in 1892 to the General Term of the court (which heard all appeals) and by Republican Governor Levi P. Morton in 1895 to the newly created Appellate Division (First Department). He was reappointed to the same branch of the court by another Republican governor in 1900, and in 1905 he was named by a third Republican governor as presiding justice of the Appellate Division. He had meanwhile (1901) been reelected for a second fourteen-year term with the support of both parties.
But a longing to be in the arena himself rather than on the sidelines handing out awards led O'Brien to resign from the Supreme Court in November 1906 and resume the private practice of law. During the next three decades of undiminished activity he won a secure position in the legal profession. His best-known case was undoubtedly that of Hammer vs. Dagenhart, in which he successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court the unconstitutionality of the federal Child Labor Act of 1916.
He served as president of the New York County Lawyers Association and the New York State Bar Association.
In 1916, when Justice Charles Evans Hughes resigned from the United States Supreme Court, the living ex-presidents of the state bar association unanimously urged O'Brien's nomination to the vacancy.
Earlier, in 1905, when the famous Hughes investigation had revealed abuses in the practices of insurance companies, O'Brien was one of three eminent citizens - the others were ex-President Cleveland and George Westinghouse - who were made voting trustees of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, and O'Brien is credited with bringing about the Equitable's mutualization in 1918.
Continuing his political and civic interests, meanwhile, O'Brien became a sachem of Tammany Hall and was on intimate terms with both Boss Richard Croker and his successor Charles F. Murphy. In 1926 Mayor James J. Walker appointed him chairman of the City Committee on Plan and Survey, a volunteer group of some 500 prominent citizens formed to make a broad study of the city's future problems in such areas as zoning, traffic, and sanitation.
Perhaps O'Brien's most notable public service was his leadership in the movement for a revision of the charter of the City of New York. Despite Tammany's desperate opposition to such reform, he organized in 1936 a Citizens Charter Campaign Committee to support the new charter, which was due to come before the voters that fall, and had the satisfaction of seeing it overwhelmingly approved.
A tireless man, O'Brien was active in a variety of charitable, Catholic, and Irish causes. He was for many years an officer of the Charity Organization Society and of the Prison Association of New York. As a trustee of the New York Public Library he took great interest in its needs. His services after World War I as president of the Society for Fatherless Children of France and as chairman of the Committee for Devastated Churches in France earned him the award of chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1922.
One of the most prominent American Catholic laymen of his time, O'Brien was a frequent adviser of Cardinals John M. Farley and Patrick J. Hayes. For his services to his church Pope Pius X in 1908 made him a Knight of St. Gregory.
Always a loyal Irishman, O'Brien helped to organize sympathy in America for the Irish Land League after the visit to this country of Charles Stewart Parnell in 1879. Later, in 1920, he organized and headed the American Committee for Relief in Ireland, and he gave other support to the new Irish Free State. He was for many years an active member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and the American-Irish Historical Society.
At the time of his death he was a director of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, the Bank of the Manhattan Company, and the Underwood Elliott Fisher Company, among others, and a trustee of the Provident Loan Society. O'Brien succumbed to pneumonia at his home in New York City at the age of eighty-five. He was buried in the family vault in the Corpus Christi Monastery of the Sisters of St. Dominic in the Bronx.
Morgan O'Brien surved as a justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York (1887 - 1906). He was elected at thirty-five, and at that time he was the youngest person yet to sit on this court. In O'Brien's private practice of law the best-known case was Hammer vs. Dagenhart, in which he successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court the unconstitutionality of the federal Child Labor Act of 1916. For his activity at charity organisations, O'Brien earned the award of chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1922. And for his services to the Catholic church, Pope Pius X in 1908 made O'Brien a Knight of St. Gregory.
Morgan O'Brien was a member of the platform committee of the state Democratic convention; a president of the New York County Lawyers Association and the New York State Bar Association; a chairman of the City Committee on Plan and Survey; a member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and the American-Irish Historical Society; a trustee of the Provident Loan Society; a voting trustee of the Equitable Life Assurance Society.
He organized the Citizens Charter Campaign Committee (1936) and the American Committee for Relief in Ireland (1920).
O'Brien was active member of numerous charity organisations and societies: an officer of the Charity Organization Society and of the Prison Association of New York, a trustee of the New York Public Library, a president of the Society for Fatherless Children of France and a chairman of the Committee for Devastated Churches.
O'Brien's vigorous career was aided by the athletic trim in which he always kept himself. Brisk and erect, with snowy white hair, thick eyebrows above his blue eyes, a brush mustache, and a ruddy complexion, he had been a star baseball pitcher in college. Later he became an excellent golfer, good enough at seventy-three to represent the United States in a senior tournament against Great Britain and Canada. O'Brien's kindliness and courtesy became legendary during his judicial career. Basically gentle, he frequently counseled moderation or presented an alternative course. He was a brilliant after-dinner speaker, with a flair for poetic quotation.
On February 5, 1880, Morgan O'Brien married Rose Mary Crimmins. Of their eleven children, ten survived infancy: Genevieve, Rosalie, Madeleine, Morgan Joseph, Esmond Paul, Justin C. , Thomas Crimmins, Estelle, Maude, and Kenneth. The youngest son, Kenneth, became, like his father, a justice of the state supreme court.
He was a cattle merchant.
The youngest son. He became, like his father, justice of the state supreme court.
