Walter Nelles (April 21, 1883 – April 1, 1937) was an Americanlawyer andlaw professor. Nelles is best remembered as the co-founder and first chief legal counsel of theNational Civil Liberties Bureau and its successor, theAmerican Civil Liberties Union. In this connection, Nelles achieved public notice for his legal work on behalf ofpacifists charged with violating theEspionage Act duringWorld War I and in other politically chargedcivil rights andconstitutional law cases in later years.[1]
Walter Nelles was born April 21, 1883, inLeavenworth, Kansas, the son of George Thomas Nelles, acivil engineer.[2] Nelles attended the prestigiousPhillips Exeter Academy inExeter, New Hampshire, in preparation for anIvy League collegiate education.[2] Upon graduation from Exeter, Nelles enrolled inHarvard University, from which he graduated in 1905 with aBachelor's degree.[2]
After graduation, Nelles taught as an instructor at theUniversity of Wisconsin from the fall of 1905 to the spring of 1907.[2] Nelles then leftMadison to return to Harvard, receiving aMaster's degree in 1908 before moving onHarvard Law School.[2] He graduated from Harvard Law with anLL.B. in 1911.[2] During the period of his graduate education, Nelles also taught as an instructor atLowell Institute andRadcliffe College.[2]
After passing thebar examination, Nelles entered private legal practice.
During World War I, Nelles was a partner in the law firm ofHale, Nelles &Shorr.
Nelles defended Communist Party co-founderBenjamin Gitlow for half a decade. In 1920, Nelles and Murray C. Bernay served of counsel to defend Gitlow inPeople vs. Gitlow on behalf of the National Civil Liberties Bureau (soon renamed theAmerican Civil Liberties Union or ACLU), then Nelles and Charles Recht on appeal.[3][4] From 1923 to 1925 on behalf of the ACLU, Nelles and a youngWalter Pollak arguedGitlow v. New York before theUnited States Supreme Court against a conviction for "advocacy of criminal anarchy."[5] The court upheld Gitlow's conviction but recognized that theDue Process Clause of theFourteenth Amendmentincorporated, which protected fundamental provisions of theBill of Rights, including thefreedom of speech. (New York State GovernorAl Smith commuted Gitlow's sentence.)[6]
Throughout the 1920s, Nelles participated in a loose partnership of left-wing attorneys, includingJoseph R. Brodsky,Swinburne Hale,Carol Weiss King, andIsaac Shorr.[7] The firm support legal investigations published in the 67-pageReport upon the Illegal Practices of the United States Department of Justice by the National Popular Government League (NGPL); Swinburne Hale did a majority of the work on the report.[8]
In 1920, Nelles served on the defense team of the fiveSocialist members of theNew York State Assembly who were denied the right to assume the seats to which they had been elected by theRepublican Speaker of the HouseThaddeus C. Sweet, working in concert with members of both the Republican andDemocratic Parties.[2]
The liberal Nelles also sought to mediate sectarian fighting among American radicals, sitting with Roger Baldwin and others on a special committee established in August 1922 to investigate charges levied byAbraham Cahan andThe Jewish Daily Forward that theFriends of Soviet Russia (FSR) organization (for which he served as attorney[9]) was engaged in the misappropriation of funds raised for the relief of famine inSoviet Russia.[10] The committee ultimately exonerated the FSR of these charges, but Nelles declined to sign the final report because he was appointed as a law partner as counsel for that organization, a circumstance that created a potentialconflict of interest.[10]
In 1924, Nelles and Shorr appealedUnited States ex rel. Tisi v. Tod (1924) andUnited States ex rel. Mensevich v. Tod before theU.S. Supreme Court.[11][12]
Shorr and Nelles served as counsel to theAmerican Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).[8]
Holdingpacifist beliefs himself,[13] following the entry of the United States intoWorld War I in April 1917 Nelles was persuaded by his old college classmateRoger Baldwin to leave his practice to become house counsel for the fledglingNational Civil Liberties Bureau (NCLB) of theAmerican Union Against Militarism that Baldwin had helped launch.[14] This organization, based inNew York City, would eventually emerge as theAmerican Civil Liberties Union.
The Civil Liberties Bureau in its first years dealt primarily with cases involvingconscientious objectors and political opponents of the war who faced charges under the so-calledEspionage Act. Among those high-profile cases which Nelles handled included the trial of the American Socialist Society and itsRand School of Social Science and the trial ofMax Eastman and his publication,The Masses.[2]
The offices of the National Civil Liberties Bureau were raided by theDepartment of Justice on August 30, 1918, by agents who seized all of Nelles' files.[15] The raid was based upon invalidsearch warrants.
Nelles and Baldwin were joined in the main office of the National Civil Liberties Bureau byAlbert DeSilver, a lawyer who left private practice to work full-time on the defense of civil liberties in the courts.[16] The troika guided the activities of the NCLB and the successor ACLU in its earliest years. Roger Baldwin later fondly recalled their partnership:
We made a team which was never after equalled in the American Civil Liberties Union. DeSilver contributed the quick unerring judgment, with a gay and easy approach to tough problems; Nelles, the reflective opinions of a studious lawyer sometimes aroused by hot indignations; and I, the techniques of thesocial case worker, an organizer and a publicity man for such limited publicity as was open to us.[17]
The three men "loved each other," Lucille B. Milner, secretary of the NCLB remembered.[17] The team was abruptly shattered when DeSilver was killed in a fall from a railroad car in 1924, dying at the age of 36.[18] Nelles later memorialized his fallen colleague by writing his biography, published byW.W. Norton & Co. in 1940.[19]
Nelles later served on the faculty ofYale Law School where he often taught courses on the history of laborinjunctions.
Nelles was asocial democrat and a member of theLeague for Industrial Democracy during the 1920s.[2] At the time of his death he was regarded by friends as aliberal rather than asocialist.[13]
Walter Nelles died at the age of 53 on April 1, 1937, inNew Haven, Connecticut, following a brief illness.[1]
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