Julian William Mack
National Cyclopedia of American Biography
MACK, Julian William, judge, was born in San Francisco, Calif., July 19, 1866, son of William Jacob and Rebecca (Tandler) Mack. His father, who came from Bavaria about 1849, was a merchant, engaged in business successively in Cincinnati, Ohio, Terre Haute, Ind., San Francisco, Calif., and again in Cincinnati. Julian W. Mack received his early education in the public schools of Cincinnati and was graduated LL.B. at Harvard law school in 1887. While there he became one of the founders (1887) of the Harvard Law Review. He was traveling Parker fellow of Harvard at the universities of Berlin and Leipzig during 1887-90. Admitted to the Illinois bar in 1890 he began the practice of law in Chicago in the office of Julius Rosenthal, continuing in practice until 1903. He was professor of law in Northwestern law school during 1895-1902 and in the University of Chicago law school during 1902-11; civil service commissioner of Chicago in 1903, and judge of the circuit court of Cook county, 1903-11, and of the appellate court of the first district of Illinois, 1908-10. For three years (1904-07) he also acted as judge of the Chicago juvenile court, the first juvenile court in the world, in which position lie revealed not only his high qualities as a judge but a fine understanding of the juvenile mind and a keen desire to befriend and protect children. He accomplished much toward giving the childrens' court movement legal respectability- in this country and abroad and decisions made by him in this court were used as textbooks at Harvard law school. In 1911 Mack was appointed a judge of the U.S. circuit court of appeals, seventh circuit, by President William H. Taft and assigned to the U.S. commerce court. After the abolition of that tribunal in 1913 he was assigned to regular duty in the circuit court of appeals, second circuit, continuing on that bench until his retirement in September 1941. In 1926 he presided at the first trial of Harry M. Daugherty (q.v.), former U.S. attorney-general, and Col. Thomas W. Miller (q.v.), former alien property custodian. In 1933 he was designated by Charles Evans Hughes (q.v.), then chief justice of the United States, to sit in the receivership action of the American Brake Shoe & Foundry Co. against the Interborough Rapid Transit and Manhattan Railway companies of New York city. He took over court supervision of receiverships for both lines and there began a series of proceedings that ended in transit unification, with the city taking over the lines in 1940. In 1937 Mack upheld as constitutional the registration provisions of the public
( 74) utility act of 1935, declaring that they were separable from the regulatory features of the act. In this he was sustained by the federal circuit court of appeals. As a consequence the North American Co. and the American Water Works &, Electric Co., Inc., two of the principal public utility holding companies in the United States, withdrew suits and registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He also presided over the Sugar Institute anti-trust case; the re-organization of Fox Metropolitan theaters; the trial of Marcus Garvey, "Provisional president of Africa," charged with using the mails to defraud investors in stock of the Black Star Line, Inc., and the suit (which he dismissed) of investors in debentures of the bankrupt Insull Utility Investments Corp., who sought to recover some $30,000,000 from five leading New York banks and the General Electric Co. He sent William Y. (Big Bill) Dwyer, so-called "king of the bootleggers," to a federal penitentiary for two years, and Daniel P. O'Connell, Albany (N.Y.) democratic boss, to jail for contempt of court for refusing to answer questions before the grand jury investigating a baseball pool. In the first World war he was entrusted with various important tasks growing out of the war. He was chairman of a committee appointed by the secretary of the treasury to draft an amendment to the war risk insurance act providing for compensation, allotments, allowances and insurance for officers and enlisted men of the army and navy. He also served with Harlan F. Stone (q.v.), later chief justice of the United States, as a member of the war department board on conscientious objectors and was an umpire of the national war labor board in the settlement of disputes between employers and employes in war plants. A Jew in his religious faith, he was prominent in the movement for the restoration of Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people, serving as president of the Zionist Organization of America during 1918-21 and of the American Jewish Congress in 1919. He was the first chairman of the committee of Jewish delegations at the Paris peace conference in 1919, urging that the rights of minority groups be respected by the Allied powers. In addition he was president of the Palestine Endowment Fund, Inc., and the Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation; chairman of the board of trustees of the Jewish Institute of Religion; member of the board of governors of the Hebrew university and Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem; honorary president of the American Economic Committee for Palestine; honorary chairman of the American Representatives of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, American Palestine Campaign, and United Palestine Appeal, and president of the National Conference of Jewish Charities (later National Conference of Jewish Social Work) 1904-06, and National Conference of Social Work, 1912. In 1917 he was elected first president of the National Organization of Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Associations. He also served as president of the Immigrants Protective League, Friends of Russian Freedom t and Infants Welfare Society, chairman of the board of trustees of Michael Reese hospital, I vice president of the Childrens Hospital Society a and Society for Social Hygiene and a director of the Jewish Charities, all of Chicago. He was an d overseer of Harvard university for three terms s and a member of the American, Illinois, Chicago a and New York city bar associations, Harvard, n Literary, Law, Caxton and City clubs of Chicago, Cosmos Club of Washington, D.C., Harvard, City, Grolier, Town Hall, Civic, Hardware and Auto- mobile clubs of New York city and Harvard Club of Boston. In politics lie was a Democrat. Mack was married twice: (1) in Cincinnati, Mar. 9, 1896, to Jessie, daughter of Solomon Fox, a diamond merchant of that city; she died in 1938, leaving one daughter, Ruth, who married Mark Brunswick; (2) in New York city, Sept. 4, 1940, to Cecile (Blumgart) Brunswick, daughter of Louis Blumgart, a New York manufacturer, and widow of Emanuel Brunswick. He died in New York city, Sept. 5. 1943.
