“A blot on the federal judiciary.” That is how U.S. Magistrate Judge Gary Stein describes the notorious Martin T. Manton, the federal judge who was convicted on conspiracy charges in 1939. The Federal Bar Council Quarterly recently spoke with Magistrate Judge Stein about his critically-acclaimed book, “Justice for Sale: Graft, Greed, and A Crooked Federal Judge in 1930s Gotham,” to learn more about the infamous Manton.
Magistrate Judge Stein
Magistrate Judge Stein, who was sworn in as a U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Southern District of New York on September 15, 2023, has an impressive writing background. He was trained as a journalist at New York University, where he was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper. At New York University Law School, he served as the senior articles editor of the law review. He honed his writing skills during a clerkship on the New Jersey Supreme Court, as a litigator at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP, and as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where he served as chief appellate attorney from 2002 to 2004. Magistrate Judge Stein has written numerous articles and essays about the law and legal history. He has twice received the Burton Award for Distinguished Legal Writing.
Magistrate Judge Stein said that he decided to write about Manton for a few reasons. He had been intrigued by Manton’s story since law school. After reading the informative book, “The Corrupt Judge: An Inquiry into Bribery and Other High Crimes and Misdemeanors in the Federal Courts,” by former Justice Department official Joseph Borkin, Magistrate Judge Stein learned more about Manton’s rampant corruption. But he still wanted to know “why” Manton – a federal appellate judge – engaged in such behavior. As Magistrate Judge Stein noted, the courts are intended to be “temples for justice,” but these temples are “predicated on a judge being impartial.” So Magistrate Judge Stein sought to delve deeper into this unfortunate part of the Second Circuit’s legal history.
Manton’s Story
Manton grew up in a middle-class Irish Catholic family on Long Island. A Columbia Law School graduate, Manton worked for over a decade in a lucrative private legal practice, where he handled high-profile murder cases as well as personal injury matters. During this period, he also became connected to a number of Brooklyn-era Democratic political clubs. Manton was appointed a U.S. District Judge in the Southern District of New York in 1916. At age 36, Manton was the youngest federal judge in the country.
Two years later, in 1918, he was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where he initially presided over cases with such legal luminaries as Judge Learned Hand and his cousin, Judge Augustus “Gus” Hand. As Magistrate Judge Stein points out, Manton was perceived as a “political type” and his legal acumen was often called into question. Manton’s colleagues were not enthralled with Manton’s writing, which, as Magistrate Judge Stein points out in his book, was known as a “scissors and paste job” in those pre-computer days. According to Magistrate Judge Stein, Judge Hand would eagerly compare Manton’s opinions with the parties’ briefs, and would “gleefully shout to his law clerk when he discovered another example of cutting-and-pasting, as he invariably did.”
In 1922, Manton was nearly appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. After Justice William R. Day announced that he planned to retire, President Warren G. Harding strongly considered Manton – particularly as the Supreme Court’s lone Catholic, Justice Joseph McKenna, also was expected to retire soon. Manton, who was known as “Praying Manton” outside the courtroom, was one of the more well-known Catholic judges in the country at that time. (Indeed, in 1926, Fordham Law School honored him with a doctor of law degree in light of Manton’s perceived reputation as a judge who spoke with great moral authority). New York Archbishop Patrick Hayes strongly advocated Manton’s selection to the White House.
Chief Justice William H. Taft, however, prevented Manton from joining the Supreme Court. President Harding had appointed Chief Justice Taft to the Court and relied on him for advice for other Supreme Court nominees. According to Magistrate Judge Stein, Chief Justice Taft “loathed Manton”; Taft felt that Manton was “an utterly unfit man for our Court” and “a shrewd, cunning political judge” lacking in the basic “moral qualities” indispensable to serve in such a high position. Ultimately, President Harding selected Pierce Butler, a Catholic who worked as a railroad lawyer in Minnesota.
Manton campaigned for another open seat on the Supreme Court during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, but to no avail. (Interestingly, Butler was one of the “Four Horsemen” on the Supreme Court who regularly opposed New Deal legislation. It is unclear if Manton, who typically upheld New Deal laws as a circuit judge, would have operated differently as a justice.).
A TIME magazine article described Manton as “[l]arge, baldish and worldly,” but noted that “he was no ivory tower judge. . . . Lawyers disliked his air of domineering omniscience, which seemed seldom justified by his understanding of their cases. And some lawyers worried about his off-bench business affairs which were known to be extensive and intricate.”
Those off-bench business affairs were, indeed, quite extensive and intricate. When Manton joined the bench, he was paid $6,000 a year – much less than what Manton earned in private practice. When Manton was first appointed, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote that Manton was “to be moved by other and higher considerations.” Sadly, Manton had no intention of abandoning his money-making pursuits simply because he was now a federal judge.
As Magistrate Judge Stein details in his book, Manton engaged in graft of about $823,000, or about $17 million today. Among other misdeeds, Manton accepted a $10,000 cash bribe in his chambers. Manton also, as Magistrate Judge Stein explains in his book, took payoffs to release two of the era’s most notorious racketeers from prison.”
As the trial got underway in May 1939, the New York Herald Tribune called it “the most important legal proceeding in the history of the federal courts.” The prosecution was led by U.S. Attorney John T. Cahill, who later built a law firm that still bears his name: Cahill, Gordon & Reindel. The trial was presided over by Judge W. Calvin Chestnut, a district judge from Maryland sitting by designation in the Southern District of New York since all of the other judges in the district were acquainted with Manton to one degree or another.
A jury promptly convicted Manton of conspiracy. Following the jury verdict, the media called the conviction “a triumph for decency and justice” and “one of the most important events of our times.” Manton was sentenced to the maximum sentence possible: two years in prison and a $10,000 fine. At his sentencing, Judge Chestnut told Manton that “[a]ll public offices are a public trust, but a judicial office is more – it is a sacred trust.” Judge Chestnut added that Manton betrayed that trust and engaged in conduct “abhorrent to our conception of public justice” that “has shocked the public generally and particularly the bench and bar of this country.”
Manton died seven years after his conviction.
Magistrate Judge Stein’s View
In his book, Magistrate Judge Stein proffers that the Manton scandal “is not the story of a single rogue federal judge who temporarily lost his moral bearings amid the whirlwind of the Great Depression.” Rather, Magistrate Judge Stein posits that Manton’s tale “is the story of a New York City culture so suffused with corruption and greed that it did not even make an exception for the judicial system”; “[i]t was a culture that simply did not prize, or enforce, the norms of judicial independence, integrity, and impartiality in the way that we now take for granted.”
Magistrate Judge Stein also notes that Manton would likely have faced much harsher penalties under current law. As Magistrate Judge Stein cogently explains, “[a] present-day Manton likely would be charged under a law that did not exist in 1939, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act of 1970, more commonly known as ‘RICO,’” which “carries a twenty-year maximum sentence, rather than the two years faced by Manton.” Magistrate Judge Stein adds that Manton would have also “scored high” on many of the factors set forth in the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, including factors relevant in a case involving misconduct by a public official.
Ultimately, Manton remains a “blot” on the otherwise sterling reputation of the courts in this circuit.