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Thurman Arnold

A Biography

Spencer Weber Waller author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:New York University Press

Published:1st Dec '05

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Thurman Arnold cover

Thurman Arnold (1891-1969) was a major iconoclast of American law and a great liberal of the 20th century. In this first biography of Arnold, Spencer Weber Waller traces Arnold's life from his birth in Laramie, Wyoming, and explores how his western upbringing influenced his distinctive views about law and power. After studying at Princeton and Harvard Law School, Arnold practiced law in Chicago, served in World War I, and eventually returned to Laramie, where he was a prominent practitioner, mayor, and state legislator in the 1920s.
As the rise of national corporations began to destroy the local businesses that were the core of his legal practice, Arnold turned from the courtroom to the academy, most notably at Yale Law School, where he became one of the leading spokesmen for the legal realism movement. Arnold’s work attracted the attention of Franklin Roosevelt, who appointed him to head the Antitrust Division during the New Deal. He went on to establish Arnold, Fortas & Porter, which became the epitome of the modern Washington, DC law firm, and defended pro-bono hundreds of clients accused of Communist sympathies during the McCarthy era.
One of the few individuals who shaped 20th century American law in so many of its facets, Arnold's biography is long overdue, and Waller honors his life and legacy with a book that is both vividly narrated and extensively researched.

Waller has succeeded in capturing the essence of a lawyer, often described as a blend of Voltaire and a cowboy, who made such important contributions to twentieth century jurisprudence. * The Law and Politics Book Review *
Soebce Wakker has written a useful biography of Thurman Arnold, collecting in one place the available materials and adding the results of his own research. * The American Journal of Legal History *
Antitrust is a dry subject, but fortunately Waller knows it, and so did Arnold. Both have the flair to make it come alive * Chicago Tribune *
Wallers biography captures the energy, creativity, sense of humor and commitment of this original legal scholar and the nation's greatest anti-trust lawyer, who had the guts to battle the McCarthy scourge of the 1950s. Every law student should read this book about a genuine legal hero. It will give them a sense of lawyering as a noble profession. -- Joseph A. Califano, Jr.,The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University
The tale is nicely told and brings out the complications of being an aggressive antitrust enforcer in a political administration deeply ambivalent about competition policy. * Antitrust Review *

ISBN: 9780814793923

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 544g

273 pages