North Dakota Law Review/Volume 1/Number 5/Senatorial Disdain, Dignity or Deliberation?
SENATORIAL DISDAIN, DIGNITY OR DELIBERATION?
Last year Senator Walsh of Montana notified the Hon. John W. Davis that he was the Democratic nominee for President. On that occasion Senator Walsh said:
“The head and front of your offending hath this extent, that you have been employed as a lawyer by gigantic business interests. It is not advanced that you have represented them except as a legal adviser. This implies no acceptance of either the political or the economic views of your clients. It is an unjustifiable inference that your views on matters of public concern approximate those of your employers, or that, called to high public office, you would accommodate your own to theirs, or grant them aught beyond justice.”
On March 7th, the same Senator Walsh said, concerning the nomination of the Hon. Charles B. Warren:
“I think that he ought not to be made Attorney General, not only because he is not eminent in the profession, but chiefly because for years he was the representative, in his State, of the sugar trust, one of the most offensive and oppressive trusts with which the American people have unfortunately been familiar in the present and past generation.”
It is recorded that the name of the Hon. John G. Sargent was presented to the Senate shortly after the second rejection of Mr. Warren. The name had scarcely settled on the clerk’s desk, when it made a dash for the Judiciary Committee, was reported back almost immediately, the Senatorial rules were suspended, and unanimous confirmation of the nomination reported; and that which might have been termed disdain, or even duplicity, by a critical citizenship was translated into distinguished dignity through the medium of a rather driving deliberation.