Stanley Forman Reed
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- For the Indian newspaper editor and British politician, see Stanley Reed.
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Stanley Forman Reed
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 Stanley Forman Reed |
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| In office January 31, 1938 – February 25, 1957 |
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| Nominated by | Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
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| Preceded by | George Sutherland |
| Succeeded by | Charles Evans Whittaker |
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| Born | December 31, 1884 Minerva, Mason County, Kentucky |
| Died | April 2, 1980 (aged 95) Huntington, New York |
| Spouse | Winifred Elgin Reed |
Stanley Forman Reed (December 31, 1884 – April 2, 1980) was a noted American attorney who served as United States Solicitor General from 1935 to 1938 and as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1938 to 1957.
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[edit] Early life
Stanley Reed was born in the small town of Minerva in Mason County, Kentucky, on the last day of 1884 to John and Frances (Forman) Reed. His father was a wealthy physician and a Protestant who adhered to no particular organized church. The Reeds and Formans traced their history to the earliest colonial period in America, and these family heritages were impressed upon young Stanley at an early age.[1][2][3][4]
Reed attended Kentucky Wesleyan College and received a B.A. degree in 1902. He then attended Yale University as an undergraduate, and obtained a second B.A. in 1906. He studied law at the University of Virginia (where he was a member of St. Elmo Hall and the Delta Phi fraternity) and Columbia University, but did not obtain a law degree.[1][2][3] Reed married the former Winifred Elgin in May 1908. The couple had two sons, John A. and Stanley Jr., and both became attorneys.[4][3] In 1909 he traveled to France and studied at the Sorbonne, where he obtained his auditeur bénévole.[1][2][3][4]
After his studies in France, Reed returned to Kentucky. He was admitted to the bar in 1910 and established a legal practice in Maysville. He was elected to the Kentucky General Assembly in 1912 and served two two-year terms. After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, Reed enlisted in the United States Army and was commissioned a lieutenant. When the war ended in 1919, Reed returned to his private law practice and became a well-known corporate attorney. He represented the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and the Kentucky Burley Tobacco Growers Association, among other large corporations.[1][2][3][4] Stanley Reed was very active in the Sons of the American Revolution and Sons of Colonial Wars, while his wife was a national officer in the Daughters of the American Revolution. The Reeds settled on a farm near Maysville, where Stanley Reed raised prize-winning Holstein cattle in his spare time.[3][4]
[edit] Public service
[edit] Federal Farm Bureau
Reed's work for a number of large agricultural interested in Kentucky made him a nationally known authority on the law of agricultural cooperatives. It was this reputation which brought him to the attention of federal officials.[4]
Herbert Hoover had been elected President of the United States in November 1928, and took office in March 1929. But even then, the agricultural industry in the United States was heading for a depression. Unlike his predecessor, Hoover agreed to provide some federal support for agriculture, and in June 1929 the Congress passed the Agriculture Marketing Act. The Act established and was administered by the Federal Farm Board.[5][6] The crash of the stock market in late October 1929 led the Federal Farm Board's general counsel to resign. Although Reed was a Democrat, his reputation as a corporate agricultural lawyer led President Hoover to appoint him the new general counsel of the Federal Farm Board on November 7, 1929. Reed served as general counsel until December 1932.[1][2][3][4][7]
[edit] Reconstruction Finance Corporation
In December 1932, the general counsel of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) resigned, and Reed was appointed the agency's new general counsel. Since 1930, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Eugene Meyer had pressed Hoover to take a more active approach to ameliorating the Great Depression. Hoover finally relented, and submitted legislation. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act was signed into law on January 22, 1932, but its operations were kept secret for five months. Hoover not only feared political attacks from Republicans but that publicity about which corporations were receiving RFC assistance might disrupt the agency's attempts to keep companies financially viable. When Congress passed legislation in July 1932 forcing the RFC to make public which companies received loans, the resulting political embarrassment led to the resignation of the RFC's president and his successor as well as other staff turnover at the agency.[8] Franklin D. Roosevelt's election as President in November 1932 led to further staff changes. On December 1, 1932, the RFC's general counsel resigned, and Hoover appointed Reed to the position. Roosevelt—impressed with Reed's work and needing someone who knew the agency, its staff and its operations—kept Reed on. Reed mentored and protected the careers of a number of young lawyers at RFC, many of whom became highly influential in the Roosevelt administration: Alger Hiss, Robert H. Jackson, Thomas Gardiner Corcoran, Charles Edward Wyzanski, Jr. (later an important federal district court judge), and David Cushman Coyle.[1][2][3][4][5][9]
During his tenture at the RFC, Reed influenced two major national policies. First, Reed was instrumental in setting up the Commodity Credit Corporation. In early October 1933, President Roosevelt ordered RFC president Jesse Jones to establish a program to strengthen cotton prices. On October 16, 1933, Jones met with Reed and together they created the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC). President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6340 the next day, which legally established the CCC. The brilliance of the CCC was that the government would hold surplus cotton as security for the loan. If cotton prices rose above the value of the loan, farmers could redeem their cotton, pay off the loan and make a profit. If prices stayed low, the farmer still had enough money to live as well as plant next year. The plan worked so well that it became the basis for the New Deal's entire agricultural program.[10]
Second, Reed helped to successfully defend the administration's gold policy, saving the nation's monetary policy as well. Deflation had caused the value of the United States dollar to fall nearly 60 percent. But federal law still permitted Americans and foreign citizens to redeem paper money and coins in gold at the its pre-Depression value, causing a run on the gold reserves of the United States. Taking the United States off the gold standard would stop the run. It would also further devalue the dollar, making American goods less expensive and more attractive to foreign buyers. In a series of moves,[11] Roosevelt took the nation off the gold standard in March and April 1933, causing the dollar's value to sink. But additional deflation was needed. One way to do this was to raise the price of gold, but federal law required the Treasury to buy gold at its high, pre-Depression price. President Roosevelt asked the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to buy gold above the market price to further devalue the dollar. Although Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. believed the government lacked the authority to buy gold, Reed joined with Treasury general counsel Herman Oliphant to provide critical legal support for the plan. The additional deflation helped stabilize the economy during a critical period where bank runs were common.[10][12][13]
Reed's help with Roosevelt's gold polices was not yet finished. On June 5, 1933, the Congress passed a joint resolution (48 Stat. 112) voiding clauses in all public and private contracts permitting redemption in gold.[14] Hundreds of angry creditors sued to overturn the law. The case finally reached the U.S. Supreme Court. United States Attorney General Homer Stille Cummings asked Reed to join him in writing the government's brief for the Court and assisting him during oral argument. Reed's help was critical, for the high court was resolutely conservative when it came to the sanctity of contracts. On February 2, 1935, the Supreme Court made the unprecedented announcement that it was delaying its ruling by a week. The court shocked the nation again by announcing a second delay on February 9. Finally, on February 18, 1935, the Supreme Court held in Norman v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 294 U.S. 240 (1935), that the government had the power to abrogate private contracts but not public ones. However, the majority said, since there had been no showing that contractors with the federal government had been harmed, no payments would be made.[10][12]<a href="#cite_note-Gold-12" ti