Background

Emory Roy Buckner was born on August 7, 1877 in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, the eldest of three sons of James Monroe Dysant Buckner and Sarah Addie (Ellis) Buckner. The family lived on the farm of his paternal grandfather. His father worked as a schoolteacher, then as an itinerant preacher, becoming pastor of a rural Methodist church at Hebron, Nebr. , when Emory was six.

Education

While in school young Buckner spent one summer at a business college in Lincoln studying shorthand and another, after completing high school, at a teachers' institute. In 1900 he left his current job to enroll, at the age of twenty-three, at the University of Nebraska.

Later he went to to the Harvard Law School and graduated in 1904. Despite the burden of supporting a wife and (in his last year) a child, Buckner ranked third in his Harvard class of about 190 when he graduated, LL. B. , in 1907.

Career

After completing high school, Buckner taught school, at first near Hebron and afterward in Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory, where the family moved in 1894. In Oklahoma Buckner first came in contact with the law when he worked for three years as a court stenographer.

On leaving Harvard, Buckner took a job in New York with the firm of Cravath, Henderson & de Gersdorff, but after only a few months he joined the staff of bright young assistants (including Frankfurter) which Henry L. Stimson had assembled to reform the United States Attorney's office in that city.

He worked on one major case: the customs frauds of the American Sugar Refining Company, which the Stimson team prosecuted with great success. In 1910 an anti-Tammany district attorney, Charles Whitman, took office in New York County and hired Buckner away from the federal attorney's office. Two and a half years later, in the aftermath of the murder of a small-time gambler (Herman Rosenthal) who had offered to give evidence of corruption in the city's vice squad, Buckner was appointed counsel to a new aldermanic committee to investigate the New York Police Department.

The aldermanic investigation had its sensational moments, but most of its eighty public sessions were devoted to what Buckner called "hard steady plugging on fundamental questions of police administration. " The final recommendations of the committee, published in 1913, produced less immediate result than Buckner had hoped, but within a decade nearly all the recommended reforms had been adopted.

Shortly after the investigation Buckner and Howland joined forces with two other young lawyers, Elihu Root, Jr. , and Grenville Clark, to form a partnership that became one of the largest and most successful law offices in New York.

Since the police investigation, Buckner had intervened only once in political life, when he managed the unsuccessful reelection campaign of Mayor John Purroy Mitchel in 1917.

But in 1925 the Coolidge administration, fending off charges of corruption in the Justice Department, needed a nonpolitical United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York. Buckner accepted the post with a guarantee that he would be independent of Washington in handling the monstrous enforcement problems arising from prohibition and in choosing his staff.

The next two years marked the height of Buckner's public influence.

Although he hated and indeed had violated the prohibition law, he took the pledge on accepting government office and insisted that everyone who worked for him do likewise. Virtually abandoning the hopeless piecemeal prosecution of some 75, 000 prohibition offenders arrested in New York each year, Buckner instead sought to padlock the clubs, restaurants, and stores where alcohol was available.

For a wild if brief period in 1925 it seemed possible that his tactics would dry up the city. But the countertide was too strong, and after a year Buckner turned his attention elsewhere.

A first trial late in 1926 ended in a divided jury; in the second trial, Miller was convicted and Daugherty saved only by the recalcitrance of a single juror. Buckner was not yet fifty when he resigned from the office of United States Attorney in 1927.

Early in 1932 Buckner suffered the first of a series of strokes; he lived for nine more years, and continued to participate daily in the work of his firm, but he never again argued a case in court. A final stroke, at his New York home, ended his life in 1941.

Achievements

• The real boost in Buckner's career began since the time when he formed a partnership with other two associates, Elihu Root, Jr. , and Grenville Clarkand, and turned it into one of the largest and most successful law offices in New York. His most significant case was the prosecution of former Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty and former Alien Property Custodian Thomas W. Miller on charges of "conspiring to defraud the government of their best services" i. e. , taking bribes, a crime that could not be charged directly because of the statute of limitations. Probably his other most important subsequent case was the successful prosecution of Queens Borough President Maurice E. Connolly (a Democrat) for his part in sewer construction frauds. Buckner also conducted the trial under special appointment from Governor Alfred E. Smith, a remarkable honor for a Republican to receive while Smith was running for president. Buckner was also regarded for his teaching work being a mentor to many junior attorneys, who became known collectively as "Buckner Boys" or "Buckner's Boys".

Works

More photos

• book

  • Boundary Question Between the Republic of Guatemala and the Republic of Honduras Under Mediation of the Honorable Secretary of State of the United ... Brief on Behalf of Honduras (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Boundary Question Between the Republic of Gu...)

  • The United States of America v. Thomas W. Miller Et Al.

    (Full Title:The United States of America v. Thomas W. Mill...)

  • Mutzenbecher v. Ballard U.S. Supreme Court Transcript of Record with Supporting Pleadings

    (The Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records and ...)

  • O'Leary v. N & M Realty Corporation U.S. Supreme Court Transcript of Record with Supporting Pleadings

    (The Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records and ...)

Views

Buckner's skill in planning and conducting trials attracted substantial clients, and he was an expert on internal organization; in large part he established what became the traditional pattern of the big Wall Street firm.

He kept up with nearly all the men who had ever worked for him, encouraging them and recommending them for more important positions. And he had a superb eye for talent: among those he aided were one future Supreme Court Justice (John M. Harlan) and four future judges on federal courts of appeals, as well as men who became ambassadors, Congressmen, and deans of major law schools.

Personality

Though he enjoyed an eminent career at the bar, Buckner was best remembered for his extraordinary kindness to young lawyers. His door was always open to job-hunting law students, and if he could not hire them himself he was fertile with suggestions and introductions to possible employers.

Quotes from others about the person

• Felix Frankfurter remembered Buckner as "zestful" and "companionable, " a man who combined civic zeal with a tolerance for "the foibles and even the laxities of others".
  
  His obituary in the New York Times said:
  
  "Buckner realized that he who wields the instruments of justice wields the most powerful instruments of government. In order to assure their just and compassionate use, a prosecutor must have an almost priest-like attitude toward his duties. Buckner practiced this attitude without deviation. "

Connections

On April 4, 1901 he was married to Guthrie, Wilhelmina Kathryn Keach. They had three children: Ruth Farlow, Elizabeth, and Jean.

Mother:

Sarah Addie (Ellis) Buckner

Daughter:

Jean Buckner

Daughter:

Elizabeth Buckner

Daughter:

Ruth Farlow Buckner

Partner:

Elihu Root, Jr.

Partner:

Silas W. Howland

In the fall of 1912 Buckner formed a law partnership with a former classmate, Silas W. Howland.

Partner:

Grenville Clark

father:

James Monroe Dysant Buckner

Friend:

Roscoe Pound

At Nebraska Buckner was befriended by Roscoe Pound, the new dean of the law school, who recommended him to the Harvard Law School.

Friend:

Felix Frankfurter

He made lifelong friends, notably Felix Frankfurter, a student a year ahead of him.

References

• Emory Buckner the Story of a Great Trial Lawyer of the 1920's, and of His Influence on the Men Who are the Leaders of Today's Bar
• Emory Buckner. a Biography