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Randolph E. Paul | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1890-08-08)August 8, 1890 Hackensack, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | February 6, 1956(1956-02-06) (aged 65) |
| Alma mater | New York Law School Amherst College |
Randolph Evernghim Paul (1890–1956) was a name partner of the international law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and was a lawyer specializing intax law. He is credited as "an architect of the modern tax system."[1]
Paul, the grandson of a butcher, was born inHackensack, New Jersey on August 8, 1890, to Charles B. and Martha Evernghim Paul. He worked his way throughAmherst College (Class of 1911), and received his law degree fromNew York Law School in 1913. He began his career as a switchboard operator and, later, as an insurance adjuster.[2]
In 1918, Paul happened upon an advertisement placed by one George E. Holmes soliciting assistance in Holmes' specialty practice in federal income tax law, a still novel concentration in the years just following adoption of theSixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Though lacking any background in the field, Paul answered the ad, got the job, and within two years had become a name partner in the firm.
Over the next twenty years, the firm's name underwent various changes: first Holmes, Paul and Havens; then Holmes, Lynn, Paul and Havens; then Olcott, Holmes, Glass, Paul and Havens; and finally Olcott, Paul and Havens. In 1938, Paul left his small firm to form the tax law department at one of New York's oldest and then-largest firms,Lord, Day & Lord. By this time, Paul was a pioneer in establishing tax law as an integral component of a full-serviceWall Street law firm. He was the author of the leading treatise on tax law in the United States (the six-volumeLaw of Federal Taxation with Jacob Mertens, and successive editions ofStudies in Federal Taxation), and a visitingSterling Professor of Law atYale Law School.[2][3]
In 1940, he was named a director of theFederal Reserve Bank of New York, the first tax lawyer ever to occupy the position. Throughout the 1930s, Paul served as a part-time advisor toU.S. Secretary of TreasuryHenry Morgenthau Jr. Five days after theJapanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Paul finally accepted previously-declined entreaties to work full-time for theU.S. Treasury Department. First as special assistant to the Secretary for the Tax Division, and later as the Department'sGeneral Counsel, Acting Secretary of the Treasury for Foreign Funds Control, and theRoosevelt Administration's chief spokesperson on tax matters onCapitol Hill, Paul convinced Morgenthau to embraceKeynesian principles and to consider taxation as a vehicle for social progress.
To this end, Paul was instrumental in defeating attempts to enact a national sales tax and in transforming the federal income tax into the broad-based revenue source and tool of fiscal policy that exists today. The Government's existing income tax system—in which taxpayers need not pay their tax bill for one year until the next, when the value of the dollar had fallen—exacerbated the problem. The confluence of these events required an exceptional solution, which the Paul-writtenRevenue Act of 1942 addressed. Paul is credited with modernizing theInternal Revenue Code and persuading Congress to enact the payroll withholding tax.
Paul was also the principal sponsor of the first contemporaneous Government paper attacking America's dormant complicity inThe Holocaust.[4] Entitled "Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews", written byJosiah DuBois, the document was an indictment of theU.S. State Department's diplomatic, military, and immigration policies. Among other things, theReport narrated the State Department's inaction and in some instances active opposition to the release of funds for the rescue of Jews inRomania andoccupied France, and condemned immigration policies that closed American doors to Jewish refugees from countries then engaged in their systematic slaughter.
The catalyst for theReport was an incident involving 70,000 Jews whose evacuation from Romania could have been procured with a $170,000 bribe. The Foreign Funds Control unit of the Treasury, which was within Paul's jurisdiction, authorized the payment of the funds, the release of which both the President and Secretary of StateCordell Hull supported. From mid-July 1943, when the proposal was made and Treasury approved, through December 1943, a combination of the State Department's bureaucracy and the British Ministry of Economic Warfare interposed various obstacles. TheReport was the product of frustration over that event. On January 16, 1944, Morgenthau and Paul personally delivered the paper toPresident Roosevelt, warning him that Congress would act if he did not. The result was Executive Order 9417[5] creating theWar Refugee Board composed of the Secretaries of State, Treasury and War. Issued on January 22, 1944, the Executive Order declared that "it is the policy of this Government to take all measures within its power to rescue the victims of enemy oppression who are in imminent danger of death and otherwise to afford such victims all possible relief and assistance consistent with the successful prosecution of the war."[6]
President Truman appointed Randolph Paul chief negotiator with the Swiss concerning Nazi assets under Swiss control. In spring 1946 Paul requested permission to threaten Switzerland with economic sanctions as a means of pressuring it to turn over Nazi assets that remained under Swiss control. Permission was refused and Paul was instructed to accept Switzerland's offer, which was based on Switzerland's much lower estimate of the amount of Nazi loot in Switzerland.[7]
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Paul left the Treasury Department in September 1944 to rejoin Lord, Day & Lord. Eighteen months later, he accepted an invitation to join a law firm then known as Cohen, Cole, Weiss & Wharton and which became, with the addition of Paul andLloyd K. Garrison, the firm of Paul, Weiss, Wharton & Garrison. Based on his reputation gained in the Treasury Department, Paul attracted such blue-chip clients asFord,General Motors,Standard Oil of California,Brown Shoe Company,B.V.D. Company,Reader's Digest,Union Sulpher Company, and the estates of the rich and famous. In addition to his private practice, Paul continued writing, includingTaxation for Prosperity (1947), a studied argument for postwar maintenance of a progressive income tax;The History of Taxation in the United States (1953); and dozens of articles for journals such asThe Harvard Law Review,The Yale Law Journal,The Tax Law Review andThe Tax Lawyer.
Paul maintained a teaching schedule as an adjunct professor atHarvard andHoward University Law Schools, among others. He briefly returned to government service as a part-time Special Assistant toPresident Truman for tax policy and later as the President's envoy to the negotiations betweenSwitzerland and theAllied Powers on Nazi assets in Switzerland – a controversy that stayed alive for a half century after his death. He was a frequent witness before congressional committees on tax and fiscal policy, testifying on the proper role of taxation in the Nation's social and fiscal programs.
On February 6, 1956, Paul was testifying before a Joint Committee of the U.S. Congress onPresident Eisenhower's Economic Report. Having completed his prepared text, Paul began to answer a question when he slumped forward, dead of a heart attack.[2]
