King, Carol Weiss

KING, CAROL WEISS (1895–1952). Born into an affluent Jewish family headed by a man who organized one of the first corporation law firms in New York, Carol Weiss King represented radicals throughout her career, keeping them out of jail and from being deported. One of her brothers founded Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, which remains a leading, traditional New York firm. A tireless writer who conducted an extensive correspondence, gave innumerable speeches, and was frequently interviewed, King remained an elusive figure for political pigeonholers. Her frequent defense of Communists led critics to label her a fellow traveler or, as the Saturday Evening Post of 17 February, 1951 put it, “the Communist’s dearest friend.” King refused to respond to such Redbaiting. She would not put a corset on her ample figure or her broad mind. Among friends, she was known as an independent radical who saw her role as defending people of various political views, guided by her own convictions, and using her innumerable contacts across political lines to defend constitutional rights.

While attending Barnard College, she became interested in labor union problems through the influence of her history teacher, Juliet Stuart Poyntz. In 1916 she worked as a research fellow for the American Association for Labor Legislation. Feeling she could accomplish even more as an attorney, she entered New York University Law School and became one of the few female graduates in the class of 1920. Her first legal work was defending foreign-born workers who had been victims of the Palmer Raids.

In 1925 King set up a law firm in partnership with Communist Joseph Brodsky and anarchist Isaac Shorr, and from 1924 through 1931 she edited the American Civil Liberties Union’s Law and Freedom Bulletin. After author Gordon King, whom she had wed in 1917, died of pneumonia in 1930, she continued her numerous activities, propelled to an even quicker pace by the Depression and New Deal. One of her achievements was to persuade old family friends like Wall Street attorney Walter H. Pollak to work gratis on constitutional law cases. In 1932 she made a trip to Europe, visiting the Soviet Union, which inspired her, and Germany, which horrified her. On her return to the United States, she started the International Juridical Association Bulletin and was its moving force until 1942, when it merged with the Lawyers Guild Review, published by the National Lawyers Guild, another organization she helped to found.

Her association with Brodsky brought her into the International Labor Defense and work on the Scottsboro case. King also worked on hundreds of less well known cases. Her most famous client of the decade was Harry Bridges, who was threatened with deportation in 1938 for membership in the Communist Party. He won in his first hearing, based greatly on King’s innovative use of expert testimony by university professors on Marxist theory, but he was rearrested and lost his second hearing. King orchestrated a reversal of the deportation order in the U.S. Supreme Court during World War II (Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135 [1945]).

In 1942 King became general counsel for the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, a post she held until her death. That same year, her persuasive skills became evident to all when she was representing William Schneiderman, a Communist Party leader whose citizenship the government sought to revoke. As part of the defense effort, King was able to convince Wendell Willkie, 1940 Republican presidential candidate, to represent Schneiderman in the Supreme Court. The case was won in 1943 (Schneiderman v. United States, 320 U.S. 118 [1943]). Her greatest legal triumph came in 1950 when the Supreme Court accepted her theoretical positions and held that the Immigration and Naturalization Service had to obey the same rules as all other administrative agencies, halting all deportations until the service undertook reforms (Wong Yang Sung v. McGrath, 339 U.S. 33 [1950]). Congress soon passed an exception for the service, and King returned to the courtrooms to slow down the deportations of thousands of political radicals born abroad. She seldom won, but few clients were actually deported.

King formed a new law partnership in 1948 with Blanche Freedman, a New York lawyer long active in the Women’s Trade Union League. The following year King ran unsuccessfully for a municipal judgeship on the ticket of the American Labor Party. The New York Bar Association rated her as qualified but could not resist questioning her “judicial temperament.” In 1951 she made her first argument before the Supreme Court, and in January 1952 she died of cancer in New York City.

Ginger, Ann Fagan. Carol Weiss King: Human Rights Lawyer, 1895–1952. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1993.

Ginger, Ann Fagan. Introduction to and index of The International Juridical Association Bulletin (1932–42). 3 vols. New York: Da Capo Press, 1982.

King, Carol Weiss. Collection. Special Collections Research Center, University of Michigan Libraries. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/s/sclead/umich-scl-king?view=text

King, Carol, and Walter Nelles. “Contempt by Publication.” Columbia Law Review (1928).