John Frush Knox (1907–1997)
served as secretary and law clerk to
United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
Justice
James Clark McReynolds
James Clark McReynolds (February 3, 1862 – August 24, 1946) was an American lawyer and judge from Tennessee who served as United States Attorney General under President Woodrow Wilson and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the Unite ...
from 1936 to 1937. After working at various law firms, he took over his family's mail-order business and then worked as an insurance adjuster. He is chiefly known for his memoir of his year spent working for Justice McReynolds.
Life
Early life
Knox was born in 1907, in
Oak Park, Illinois
Oak Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, adjacent to Chicago. It is the 29th-most populous municipality in Illinois with a population of 54,583 as of the 2020 U.S. Census estimate. Oak Park was first settled in 1835 and later incorporated ...
to James Samuel Knox and Elizabeth Knox (née Frush). In high school, he began writing
pen pal
Pen pals (or penpals, pen-pals, penfriends or pen friends) are people who regularly write to each other, particularly via postal mail. Pen pals are usually strangers whose relationship is based primarily, or even solely, on their exchange of let ...
letters to celebrities. He began with
Civil War
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
veterans and proceeded to other notable figures of the day including
Helen Keller,
William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857March 8, 1930) was the 27th president of the United States (1909–1913) and the tenth chief justice of the United States (1921–1930), the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected pr ...
, and
Admiral Byrd
Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr. (October 25, 1888 – March 11, 1957) was an American naval officer and explorer. He was a recipient of the Medal of Honor, the highest honor for valor given by the United States, and was a pioneering American aviator, p ...
. He established an ongoing correspondence with members of the
United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
, including
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (March 8, 1841 – March 6, 1935) was an American jurist and legal scholar who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932.Holmes was Acting Chief Justice of the Un ...
,
Benjamin N. Cardozo
Benjamin Nathan Cardozo (May 24, 1870 – July 9, 1938) was an American lawyer and jurist who served on the New York Court of Appeals from 1914 to 1932 and as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1932 until his deat ...
, and
Willis Van Devanter
Willis Van Devanter (April 17, 1859 – February 8, 1941) was an American lawyer who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1911 to 1937. He was a staunch conservative and was regarded as a part of the Four ...
. His most sustained correspondence was with Van Devanter, one of the conservative "
Four Horsemen
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are figures in the Christian scriptures, first appearing in the Book of Revelation, a piece of apocalypse literature written by John of Patmos.
Revelation 6 tells of a book or scroll in God's right hand tha ...
" of the Supreme Court.
Knox did undergraduate work at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
(
Ph.B. 1930) and then studied law at
Northwestern University School of Law
Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law is the law school of Northwestern University, a private research university. It is located on the university's Chicago campus. Northwestern Law has been ranked among the top 14, or "T14" law s ...
(
J.D. 1934) and the
Harvard Law School (
LL.M. 1936).
He was an indefatigable diarist, generating more than 750 pages of scrapbook, commentary and written recollection by the time he reached college. At one time, Knox claimed that he intended to surpass
Samuel Pepys as a diarist.
The year in Washington
After his graduation from Harvard, Knox sought employment with Van Devanter. Van Devanter recommended Knox to fellow justice
James Clark McReynolds
James Clark McReynolds (February 3, 1862 – August 24, 1946) was an American lawyer and judge from Tennessee who served as United States Attorney General under President Woodrow Wilson and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the Unite ...
, who had three clerks during his time on the bench, beginning in 1927 with Maurice Mahoney for seven years, followed by John Knox for one term, and finally John McHale who came to him from Justice van Devanter on the latter's retirement and remained with him until 1941. Only after accepting the job did Knox learn that McReynolds was difficult to work for.
Knox served as private
secretary
A secretary, administrative professional, administrative assistant, executive assistant, administrative officer, administrative support specialist, clerk, military assistant, management assistant, office secretary, or personal assistant is a ...
and
law clerk to McReynolds during the Supreme Court's
October 1936 term.
[Swaine, Robert T. (1948). ''The Cravath Firm and its Predecessors 1819–1948, vol III'', p. 175, entry for John Knox.] Knox would later write a long memoir of that experience, ''A Year in the Life of a Supreme Court Clerk in
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
's
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
'', centered mostly on his relations with McReynolds and McReynolds's two black servants, but also containing observations on other members of the Supreme Court at that time, and the historical period in general.
Such memoirs are rare; few other law clerks to Supreme Court justices have documented the experience, and Knox's memoir, though not the first published, represents one of the earliest such documents.
Subsequent career
Knox’s clerkship ended when McReynolds fired him for taking time off to sit for the Washington, D.C.
bar examination
A bar examination is an examination administered by the bar association of a jurisdiction that a lawyer must pass in order to be admitted to the bar of that jurisdiction.
Australia
Administering bar exams is the responsibility of the bar associ ...
, which Knox failed. The remainder of his life was a succession of personal and professional disappointments.
He returned to
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...
in 1937. He initially landed, from 1938 to 1942, a position with a prestigious
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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law firm (Loesch, Scofield, Loesch & Burke) but was fired when he failed the
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...
bar examination. Although Knox finally passed the exam (on his third attempt), he never acquired a secure and permanent position with a firm. From 1942 to 1945, he worked as Senior Attorney, U.S. War Production Board, Region VI, and from 1945 to early 1947 at the Cravath law firm in New York City. An attempt at running his family's already faltering mail-order book business after his father's death proved disastrous, but Knox eventually found his niche in the Chicago claims office of the
Allstate Insurance Company, a
Sears
Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...
subsidiary, working there until his retirement in 1973.
Knox was a member of the Bars of
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...
,
New York and of the
Supreme Court of the United States. He also belonged to the
Society of Mayflower Descendants, the
Society of Colonial Wars, the
Sons of the American Revolution
The National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR or NSSAR) is an American congressionally chartered organization, founded in 1889 and headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. A non-profit corporation, it has described its purpose ...
, th
Sons of the Revolution and th
Society of the War of 1812 Knox's club at
Harvard was
Lincoln's Inn.
The dwindling value of the Sears stock on which Knox's retirement income was
based made his last years difficult. A lonely bachelor who struggled with prostate cancer the last decade of his life,
Knox died in 1997 in Oak Park, leaving many of his papers (including his letters from Civil War Veterans) to Harvard Law School.
See also
*
References
Bibliography
*
*
Images
John Frush Knox in 1934
{{DEFAULTSORT:Knox, John Frush
1907 births
1997 deaths
Illinois lawyers
American diarists
University of Chicago alumni
Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law alumni
Harvard Law School alumni
Writers from Oak Park, Illinois
Sons of the American Revolution
Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States
20th-century American lawyers
20th-century diarists