CUMMINGS, HOMER

Homer Stille Cummings (April 30, 1870–September 10, 1956) was the attorney general of the United States from March 4, 1933, to January 2, 1939. Born in Chicago, he took his undergraduate and law degrees from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. He developed a successful trial practice in Stamford, Connecticut, founding the firm of Cummings and Lockwood in 1909. Always active in Democratic politics, Cummings was a floor leader in support of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, and was rewarded with the attorney generalship.

While in office Cummings sponsored a number of reforms, which included establishing uniform rules of practice and procedure for the federal courts and expanding the functions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He secured legislation beefing up federal authority over firearms and such interstate crimes as kidnapping and bank robbery, and his penal reforms included the establishment of the penitentiary at Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. Yet while he successfully defended the administration's monetary policy in the "gold clause" cases, his department was unable to replicate the feat in cases challenging such central New Deal programs as the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act. These frustrations prompted President Roosevelt to instruct Cummings to draft the ill-fated Court-packing bill, which was introduced in 1937.

History's judgment of Cummings's tenure has not been altogether favorable. Many prominent New Dealers criticized the quality of legal work produced by Cummings's staff. The department, they complained, was staffed with too many political appointees and too few able lawyers. Nor did Cummings enjoy the confidence of the justices of the Supreme Court. Associate justices Louis Brandeis and Harlan Fiske Stone each expressed to Roosevelt concern over the department's competence. At the height of the Court-packing fight, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes privately complained to New Deal Senator Burton Wheeler that under Cummings's supervision New Deal statutes had been poorly drafted and the briefs and arguments offered in their defense badly drawn and poorly presented. Had the office been occupied by a different attorney general, Hughes suggested, the troubled history of New Deal legislation might have been quite different.

Cummings resigned in January of 1939. He remained in Washington, where he practiced law until his death.

See Also: LAW ENFORCEMENT; SUPREME COURT "PACKING" CONTROVERSY.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cushman, Barry. Rethinking the New Deal Court: The Structure of a Constitutional Revolution. 1998.

Irons, Peter H. The New Deal Lawyers. 1982.

Lash, Joseph P. Dealers and Dreamers: A New Look at the New Deal. 1988.

Leuchtenburg, William E. The Supreme Court Reborn: Constitutional Revolution in the Age of Roosevelt. 1995.

Barry Cushman