Morris Leopold Ernst

Background

He was born in Uniontown, Alabama, the son of Carl Ernst, who ran a general store, and Sarah Bernheim. When Morris was two years old, his father took the family to New York City, where he prospered in the real estate business.

Education

Ernst was graduated from Williams College in 1909 and from New York Law School in 1912.

Career

In 1915 he cofounded the firm of Greenbaum, Wolff and Ernst, with which he remained associated until his death. His specialty of censorship law and cases involving literary and artistic freedom gave the firm an unusual reputation. Nettled by his defeat in a United States Customs Service book censorship case in 1927, Ernst determined to master the subject.

He and William Seagle coauthored To the Pure the following year, the first of several jointly written volumes on freedom of expression in which Ernst argued the futility of attempting to define obscenity and focused on the irrational psychology of censorship.

The book brought him a succession of celebrated censorship cases, all of which he won. His most notable censorship case was the battle to have James Joyce's Ulysses admitted to the United States.

Despite the book's reputation for literary excellence since its publication in Paris in 1922, its sexual frankness had kept it out of the United States legally, although blue paperbound copies had been smuggled in.

In 1933, Bennett Cerf, head of the recently established publishing firm Random House, approached Ernst, who undertook to reverse the importation ban. Timing the proceedings to come up when the "liberal-minded" federal district Judge John M. Woolsey would be sitting, Ernst argued that the book should be considered in its entirety and as a work of literary merit.

Woolsey agreed. His eloquent opinion was a landmark in the history of American censorship law. Random House, unable to afford Ernst's standard fee, agreed to pay him a 5 percent royalty on the hardbound edition of Ulysses and 2 percent on its Modern Library and paperback editions.

While this arrangement provided a substantial lifelong income, Ernst was more pleased with the fame he had achieved. Ernst opposed governmental censorship of any stripe, but drew the line at what he called "utter freedom" of expression.

From 1929 to 1954, as co-general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union, he pushed the ACLU into fighting literary censorship.

As general counsel for the Planned Parenthood Federation from 1929 to 1960, he led the first attacks on laws restricting the distribution and use of birth control information and devices. Ernst's greatest gift as a lawyer was his flamboyant ability to dramatize and publicize issues.

His involvement with the ACLU and Planned Parenthood was only part of his public activities. Ernst had been friendly with Franklin D. Roosevelt since Roosevelt, as governor of New York, named him to the state insurance commission.

Later, at Roosevelt's direction, he spent considerable time in Washington, D. C. , sometimes staying at the White House, talking to government officials, and reporting back to the president.

One of these officials was his idol, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis; another was Federal Bureau of Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover.

During World War II, Ernst performed personal diplomatic chores for Roosevelt. This access became part of his essence. He advocated a disclosure bill requiring all organizations to file information with the government concerning goals, finances, and membership.

The ACLU, he thought, should abandon its doctrinaire approach, purge leftists, and compromise in the political arena. After the war he became more unyielding, and his professional relationship with Hoover blossomed.

It is easy and true to say this was the result of a pattern of behavior that began in the 1930's, but Ernst went further than most other informers. He protected the FBI whenever possible, calling himself "Hoover's lawyer, " and he alerted the FBI to antibureau sentiments among ACLU members and to their plans to condemn it.

While he may not have given specific names, he did pass confidential ACLU material to the FBI. His relationship with Hoover compromised his law practice: he would not sue Red Channels magazine for possibly libelous comments it made about one of his clients, journalist William L. Shirer.

Claiming that even unpopular causes were entitled to counsel, in 1957 Ernst undertook on behalf of the Dominican Republic government of General Rafael Trujillo an inquiry into the disappearance and death of Jesus de Galindez, a scholarly Basque exile and critic of Trujillo, who had vanished in New York City the year before.

His 1958 report not only absolved Trujillo but found "no evidence of any nature pointing toward [Galindez's] death or of any crime connected with his disappearance, " evidence that only Trujillo could have had.

The whole episode dismayed many of Ernst's friends and allies. He accepted the assignment to keep busy and his name prominent, just as he invented reasons to go to Washington to see a senator or Hoover.

His law practice was wide-ranging, with clients drawn from the worlds of literature, journalism, entertainment, and politics. Assistants did the spadework at his direction; he polished and controlled the final product.

He died in New York City.

Achievements

• In this manner Ernst wrote more than two dozen books, nearly half with several collaborators, about censorship and privacy, Communism in America, and sexual behavior. His own books considered the First Amendment, the leisure society, and large-scale business and government in addition to several volumes of diaries and memoirs.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Censored: The Private Life of the Movie (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Censored: The Private Life of the Movie I a...)

  • A love affair with the law;: A legal sampler,

    (Book is used and has been withdrawn from service from a L...)

  • Privacy--the right to be let alone

    (Book by Ernst, Morris Leopold, Schwartz, Alan U.)

  • America's primer,

    (Publisher: G. P Putnam Sons Date of Publication: 1931 ...)

  • Hold your tongue!: Adventures in libel and slander
  • Untitled: the diary of my 72nd year
  • Utopia 1976,
  • So far, so good
  • Report on the American Communist
  • The comparative international almanac
  • The best is yet

Religion

His own books considered the First Amendment, the leisure society, and large-scale business and government in addition to several volumes of diaries and memoirs.

Politics

In this manner Ernst wrote more than two dozen books, nearly half with several collaborators, about censorship and privacy, Communism in America, and sexual behavior.

By 1940, Ernst had become an obsessive anti-Communist. Battles with Communists in the National Lawyers Guild, which he had helped found, in the American Newspaper Guild, to which he was counsel, and the ACLU sharpened his attitude.

Views

His brisk, witty mind and breezy manner resembled a pogo stick in full flight. Ernst lived in a world of celebrities and let others know it.

Ernst's clients and friends often overlapped. His shrewd sense of tactics and publicity was instrumental in his being the single most important civil liberties lawyer in the first half of the twentieth century. More than any other lawyer of his time, Ernst led the fight for literary, artistic, and reproductive freedom.

The best ideas were usually his (he had "one hundred solutions but only ninety-five problems, " said a character lampooning him in a New York Bar Association sketch), and he never was bashful in taking the credit.

He pressed his belief that because no workable definition of obscenity was possible, all prosecutions were inevitably arbitrary and speech about sex should be fully protected.

Ernst represented Mary Ware Dennett in her successful battle to circulate The Sex Side of Life legally. "Sex wins in America, " he proclaimed after prevailing on appeal in 1930.

Quotations: "Very quickly I realized the inadequacy of my part-time preparation, " he said in a rare introspective moment. "I started to make up for it by exhibitionism and have never recovered. "

"I only learn from people with whom I disagree, " he said.

Personality

All were hastily drafted with a simplistic interpretation that allowed for quick reading. Short, ever voluble, witty, informal, and nattily attired, Ernst rarely let a difference of opinion strain a friendship.

Quotes from others about the person

• "He must know some unimportant people, but if so he never mentions them, " noted Roger Baldwin, the longtime head of the ACLU.

Connections

In 1915 he married Susan Leerburger; they had one child before her death in 1922. The next year he married Margaret Samuels, with whom he had two children.

Father:

Carl Ernst

mother Sarah Bernheim

1st wife:

Susan Leerburger

2nd wife Margaret Samuels

colleague:

William Seagle

He and William Seagle coauthored To the Pure the following year, the first of several jointly written volumes on freedom of expression in which Ernst argued the futility of attempting to define obscenity and focused on the irrational psychology of censorship.