Background
He was born on March 5, 1890 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, the son of Benjamin Perlman and Rose Nathan.
He was born on March 5, 1890 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, the son of Benjamin Perlman and Rose Nathan.
He graduated from Baltimore City College in 1908, then continued his education at the Johns Hopkins University (1908 - 1909). Perlman also graduated from the University of Maryland Law School in 1911 with an LL. B.
In 1908 he launched a career in journalism, as a reporter for the Baltimore American. He continued in the same capacity with the Baltimore Star, and then the Baltimore Evening Sun, until 1913. Perlman was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1911. He continued as a journalist, serving as the city editor of the Baltimore Evening Sun from 1913 to 1917.
In 1917, Perlman's career turned to public service and legal practice, which were to occupy the remainder of his life. That year he was appointed as an assistant in the Maryland State Law Department, and the following year he was named assistant attorney general. He served in that capacity until 1920, when he became secretary of the state. During his tenure as secretary of the state, Perlman maintained a private legal practice in Baltimore with the firm of Marbury and Perlman. His term ended in 1923, the same year that his edited work, Debates of the Maryland Constitutional Convention of 1867, was published. From 1923 to 1926, Perlman was solicitor of the city of Baltimore.
In the latter year he left public office to return to legal practice, but served thereafter on several city and state commissions devoted to the arts or civic improvement. He was also a political adviser to state figures. In 1947, President Harry S. Truman nominated Perlman for the post of solicitor general of the United States. During one term of the court he did not lose a single case. He vigorously represented government interests in the tidelands oil controversy and successfully defended the validity of the non-Communist employee loyalty oaths required by the Taft-Hartley Law, the contempt-of-Congress convictions of leading Communists, and the legality of rent control laws.
With Attorney General Tom C. Clark he prepared an amicus curiae brief for the case in which the Supreme Court in 1948 unanimously declared restrictive covenants in real estate to be unconstitutional. This brief was subsequently published as Prejudice and Property (1948). Perlman also argued for the abandonment of the "separate-but-equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, a view the court later adopted. Perlman served as acting attorney general from April to June 1952. He subsequently headed the President's Commission on Immigration and Naturalization that characterized the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 as "an arrogant, brazen instrument of discrimination. "
He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1932, 1940, 1948, 1952, and 1960. At the last of these he was co-chairman of the Committee on Resolutions and Platform. For several years he worked on the Administrative Committee of the National Democratic Advisory Council. After leaving the President's Commission on Immigration and Naturalization, he returned to legal practice in Washington, with Perlman, Lyons and Emmerglick.
Perlman died in Washington, District of Columbia.
He strongly articulated the antidiscrimination views of the Truman administration and put pressure on government agencies to curtail discriminatory practices and policies. Perlman was also involved in Democratic party affairs.
He was also a member of the National Press Club and the Associated Jewish Charities.
Perlman never married.