Abstract
“Sir,” President Andrew Jackson is supposed to have once said to his Attorney General, “you must find a law authorizing this action or I will find an Attorney General who will.” This bit of Jacksonian legend, widely repeated in the halls of Congress and elsewhere, 1 sums up one popular suspicion, perhaps even distrust, of the legal advice given by the Attorney General. The Attorney General, being the inferior, must of necessity (so the argument runs) give advice to please his superior authority; in short, the chief law officer is no judician, but a mere advocate, doing the bidding of the client who pays the fee. As Senator Trumbull stated the case: “The Attorneys General are the appointees of the President, and we know that they hold their offices at his will, and we know that when some persons have filled the presidential office they have not allowed persons to hold Cabinet offices who did not agree with them in opinion.” 2
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References
Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 439; ibid., 41st Cong., 2d Sess., p. 3036; see also Cummings and McFarland, Federal Justice,pp. 109–10.
Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., Ist Sess., p. 2112.
Samuel L. Southard, A Discourse on the Professional Character and Virtues of the Late William Wirt (Washington, 1834), pp. 32–3.
Welles, Diary,vol. 2, pp. 208, 211–3, 220. With reference to Speed’s views, compare the opinion of Attorney General Jackson, 40 OAG 45 (1941), and see E. S. Corwin, The President: Office and Powers, 1787–1948. 3d ed., pp. 137–43.
Welles, Diary,vol. 2, p. 303; Fletcher Pratt, Stanton: Lincoln’s Secretary of War (New York, 1953), p. 425.
Bates, Diary,p. 499. Speed’s opinion, 11 OAG 297 (1865), bears no date other than “July, 1865.”
F. P. Blair to Van Buren, Nov. 13, 1859, quoted in The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren, John C. Fitzpatrick ed. ( Washington, 1920 ), p. 608.
Perley’s Reminicenses of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis (Philadelphia, 1886), vol. 1, p. 474.
Tyler Dennett, John Hay (New York, 1934), p. 381.
OAG 144 (1902); see Cummings and McFarland, Federal Justice,p. 515.
Treaty of 1799 with Prussia, Art. 23, which was continued in force by Art. 12 of the treaty of 1828; 8 Slat. 378.
Lansing to Wilson, April 21, 1917; For. Rel., 1918, Supp. 2, pp. 169–71.
Wilson to Lansing, May 8, 1917; ibid.,pp. 170–1.
Lansing to Gregory, May 9, 1917; ibid.,p. 171.
See Marjorie M. Whiteman, Damages in International Law (Washington, 1937), vol. I, p. 308, footnote 48.
Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, United States Senate, Departments of State, Justice and Commerce Appropriations for 1954, 83d Cong., 1st Sess., p. 1011.
A Review of Pierce’s Administration (Boston, 1856), pp. 84–5.
Cong. Globe,33d Cong., 1st Sess., Appendix, p. 869.
Quoted in H. von Holst, The Constitutional and Political History of the United States (Chicago, 1885), vol. 4, p. 263.
McKenna, 1898; Moody, 1906; McReynolds, 1914; Stone, 1925; Murphy, 1940; Jackson, 1941; Clark, 1949.
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© 1957 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Deener, D.R. (1957). Politics. In: The United States Attorneys General and International Law. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9570-6_7
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