Voluntary Committee of Lawyers prohibition repeal records

In 1927, The Voluntary Committee of Lawyers, Inc. was organized by a group of young New York lawyers who felt that the national prohibition law was both unjust and unenforceable. Its leaders were Joseph H. Choate, Jr., who served as chairman of the Executive Committee, and Harrison Tweed, Treasurer. The organization existed to organize like-minded associates, take opinion polls of lawyers across the country, issue bulletins and annual reports reciting arguments against the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and work closely with the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment. They stressed that a Repeal Amendment should provide for ratification by state convention and then proceeded to prepare and place before all state governors in February 1933 draft bills providing for election at large of all delegates. The alertness and prestige of the members of the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers contributed to the fact that most states enacted the model convention bill verbatim. When the Twenty-First Amendment was ratified on December 5, 1933, the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers disbanded.

JOSEPH H. CHOATE, JR. was the acknowledged leader and moving force in the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers, Incorporated. His interest in this subject was preceded by an association during World War I and the 1920s with the chemical section of the Alien Property Custodians Bureau where he came to know A. Mitchell Palmer, also later to be active in the repeal movement. Upon ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt named Choate, a Republican, chairman of the Federal Alcohol Control Administration. He served in this position for two years.

He was born in New York February 2, 1876. His father was Joseph H. Choate, a famous lawyer and Ambassador to England from 1899 to 1905. Joseph H. Choate, Jr. graduated from Harvard College in 1897 and from Harvard Law School. At his death in 1968, at age 91, he was counsel in Choate, Regan, Davis and Hollister in the Graybar Building in Manhattan. He had residences at 950 Park Avenue, New York, in Mount Kisco, and in North Haven, Maine. [See New York Times, January 20, 1968, p. 29.]

HARRISON TWEED served as treasurer of the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers and did so in the spirit of civic interest that marked many other of his activities. The task was done with easy dispatch but with gusto as one of a string of similar public activities he believed should concern lawyers. While he was one of the country's best known and most successful lawyers, Tweed worked for years in the legal aid movement to extend legal services to the poor and underprivileged. In 1963 he joined Bernard Segal of Philadelphia as co-chairman of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, formed at the invitation of President John F. Kennedy at a White House meeting. Tweed served as president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York from 1945 to 1948 and was also president at different times of the American Law Institute and of the National Legal Aid Association.

Tweed was born in New York on October 18, 1885 of New England ancestry, not related to William Marcy Tweed, the Boss of Tammany Hall in the l870s. Tweed's father, Charles Harrison Tweed, was general counsel to prominent railroads while his mother, Helen Minerva Evarts, was the daughter of William M. Evarts who was successively Attorney General, Secretary of State and a United States Senator between 1868 and 1891. Tweed was himself little interested in genealogy. He graduated from Harvard in 1907 and the Harvard Law School in 1910. At the end of his career he was a partner in Milbank, Tweed, Fadley & McCloy at One Manhattan Chase Plaza. His home was at 10 Gracie Square. Tweed died on June 16, 1969 at the age of 83. [See New York Times, June 18, 1969, p. 41.]

Historical Note on the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers

1851-1917 THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT. The evolution of prohibition covers the entire sweep of American history beginning with colonial settlement in the 17th century. The clergy, the educated, and other members of the Eastern elite at first practiced and advocated temperance. Over several generations and as a part of the movement West and the democratization of elite values, temperance came to hold an appeal for the middle and lower classes. By the second third of the 19th century temperance was a widely enough shared value in the United States that organized advocates sought to outlaw alcoholic beverages. Statewide prohibition came first in the State of Maine in 1851 through the leadership of Neal Dow of Portland, later a candidate for President on the Prohibition Party ticket. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) led by Frances Willard was the most prominent of many 19th century organizations which sought state prohibition or, at least, local option laws, of which many were enacted by the turn of the century. [The best intellectual account is Joseph R. Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade (Urbana and London: University of Illinois Press, 1966).] 1893-1933 THE ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE OF AMERICA. A more militant organization that was prohibitionist in spirit was founded at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio in 1893 called the Anti-Saloon League. After forming chapters in most communities in the state, led mainly by Baptists and Methodists, Ohio became a model for similar organizations throughout the country. With a mass following, well-financed, closely related to fundamentalist churches, with full-time staffs and dynamic leaders, the Anti-Saloon League's work exemplified skilled lobbying and had the services of zealous and able lawyers like Wayne B. Wheeler. An increasing number of states went dry by voting in prohibition laws. In 1913 the Anti-Saloon League of America voted to seek national prohibition through a constitutional amendment. With wide popular support, especially from among the leading Progressive politicians of the day, and by persisting, Congress was persuaded to submit a prohibition amendment on December 18, 1917. Ratification was completed on January 16, 1919. The amendment took effect one year later. [For an exposition of the view that the appeal of prohibition "lay largely with the oldstock, middle class section of the American community" which "constituted the backbone of the Progressive Movement," see James H. Timberlake, Prohibition and the Progressive Movement 1900-1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), pp. 2-3.] The Anti-Saloon League continued on to help draft the Volstead Act and to administer national prohibition, and began only after Wheeler's death in 1927 to decline. [For a contemporary, muckraking account by a political scientist, see Peter Odegard, Pressure Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1928). For a view stressing litigation and court enforcement by the Anti-Saloon League, see Clement E. Vose, Constitutional Change: Amendment Politics and Supreme Court Litigation Since 1900 (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1972), chapter 4, pp. 69-100.] 1918-1920 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT. The National Prohibition Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919 and took effect on January 16, 1920. Its three sections read as follows: Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress. 1920-1933 ASSOCIATION AGAINST THE PROHIBITION AMENDMENT. There had always been opposition to laws banning the sale of alcohol and the most important single voluntary association to enlist in the campaign for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment was officially formed on December 31, 1920. The organization called the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment had been advocated as early as November 12, 1918 by Navy Captain William H. Stayton. By the mid-1920s, a group of wealthy businessmen who had earlier thought the Amendment might be beneficent joined the AAPA because they were alarmed "over the rising crime rate, the violence of the enforcement effort, the growth of federal power, and the perceived threat to constitutional liberties." They included Pierre and Irenee du Pont, John J. Raskob, James W. Wadsworth and later, Jouett Shouse. By publicity, state organization and attention to lobbying Congress, the AAPA was always in the forefront of the campaign to see a repeal amendment proposed by Congress. Their success came when a repeal amendment was proposed by Congress on February 20, 1933. [For the best account of the arguments against national prohibition by amendment and of the organized activities of the AAPA, see David E. Kyvig, "In Revolt Against Prohibition: The Association Against the Prohibition Amendment and the Movement for Repeal, 1919-1933" (Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1971).] 1927-1933 VOLUNTARY COMMITTEE OF LAWYERS, INC. In 1927 some young New York City lawyers who believed national prohibition to be wrong and unenforceable public policy formally established a single-purpose organization called the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers. In the lead were Joseph H. Choate, Jr., who served as chairman of the Executive Committee, and Harrison Tweed, Treasurer. As lawyers they believed the Eighteenth Amendment to be illegitimate as well as unwise policy. They organized associates in every state, took polls on the opinions of city lawyers across the country, issued bulletins and annual reports reciting arguments against the Eighteenth Amendment and worked closely with the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment. The papers of Choate and Tweed in the Collection on Legal Change today show that the most important contribution of the VCL was in the ratification process. They stressed that a Repeal Amendment should provide for ratification by state convention and then proceeded to prepare and place before all state governors in February 1933 draft bills providing for election at large of all delegates. The alertness and the prestige of the members of the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers contributed to the fact that most states enacted the model convention bill verbatim. This helps to account for the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment on December 5, 1933. The VCL then closed its books. [For an account based on these papers see the chapter entitled "Lawyers for Repeal," in Clement E. Vose, Constitutional Change, chapter 5, pp. 101-138.] 1933 THE TWENTY-FIRST AMENDMENT. Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed. Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.