Presidential Papers, Doc#399 To William Fife Knowland, 3 September 1953. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower
<--PREV
Doc #398		  |  Memorial Commission
Home Page		  |  First Term
Table of Contents		  |  Presidential Papers
Home Page 		 | 
Doc#
 |  NEXT-->
Doc #400

Document #399; September 3, 1953
To William Fife Knowland
Series: EM, AWF, Name Series
The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XIV - The Presidency: The Middle Way
Part III: The Space Age Begins; October 1957 to January 1958
Chapter 6: Building strength when there is "no perfect answer"

 

Dear Bill: Thank you very much for sending me the memorandum prepared by Judge Denman.1 Even before the election last year, I had gone on record as favoring legislation that would enable our Judiciary to do the job for which that Department was established. I have publicly favored not only a marked increase in salary for our Federal judges, but I have also advocated a substantial increase in their number, so that the services that they perform for the American people can be promptly and efficiently rendered.

A third leg in my personal platform has been that we should appoint to the Federal bench only individuals who enjoy a great reputation for integrity, competence and patriotism. I truly hope that we can get all three of these things done within a reasonable time.

With respect to the other document you sent to me--the one containing a bill of particulars against the proposed Taft-Hartley Amendment--I have had a number of communications on that particular subject.2 In general, the reaction seems to be on the whole favorable, although almost every communication objected to some particular feature of the program. As I think I told you before, Senator Taft took an active part in the conferences that developed those Amendments, and reported verbally to me that he was in general accord; he noted only one or two minor exceptions, which he termed as somewhat technical.

With warm regard, As ever

1 William Denman (LL.B. Harvard 1897) was Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In a long letter to Knowland (Aug. 15, 1953, AWF/N) Denman had complained that Eisenhower had given no "consideration to the needs of the judiciary which serves the nation's litigants." The judge went on to say that the judiciary, the third coequal department of the government, is given "the outstanding duty of protecting Americans in their right to prompt trials by jury with attorneys of their choice, to think their own thoughts without government compulsion, to worship any god or none, and to associate together for their protection," and yet "the entire cost of the entire judicial organization is less than one-thirtieth of one per cent of the total annual appropriations of the Congress." "I beg of you," Denman wrote, "to persuade the President in his next address to Congress to state the enormous increase in federal litigation without an adequate increase in the judges to dispose of it and advocate the relief of these litigants."

Denman's concern for the needs of federal litigants was further increased, he said, by the failure of the House and the Senate to agree on the number of new federal judgeships in the United States and its territories (S. 15). For background on this issue see no. 111 in this volume; Congressional Quarterly Almanac, vol. IX, 1953, pp. 332-33; and New York Times, Sept. 26, 1952, Sept. 27, 1953.

Knowland, in a cover letter enclosed with Denman's message, suggested that Eisenhower might wish to include "a paragraph or two" on the judiciary in his next State of the Union address (Aug. 21, 1953, AWF/N). The President would not, however, include this subject in the address he would deliver to Congress on January 7, 1954 (Public Papers of the Presidents: Eisenhower, 1954, pp. 6-23).

2 This document is probably the memorandum discussed in no. 397.

Bibliographic reference to this document:
Eisenhower, Dwight D. To William Fife Knowland, 3 September 1953. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 399. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/399.cfm

<--PREV
Doc #398		  |  Memorial Commission
Home Page		  |  First Term
Table of Contents		  |  Presidential Papers
Home Page 		 | 
Doc#
 |  NEXT-->
Doc #400
 


Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission
1629 K Street, NW Suite 801
Washington DC 20006
Phone: 202.296.0004    Fax: 202.296.6464