Sold – William H. Taft Seeks to “Plagiarize” from Judge Jacob Trieber’s Work For an Article He is Writing

President William McKinley appointed Jacob Trieber as a Federal judge for the Eastern District of Arkansas in 1900. Trieber thus became the first Jewish Federal judge in the United States. His appointment  was a miracle of no small proportions, considering he was an immigrant with a heavy foreign accent, of modest means, with no formal college or law school training, and came from a small town in rural Arkansas. Yet he became known nationwide for his judicial abilities and legal acumen, and was particularly noted for his courageous (and almost solitary) pro-civil rights decisions. He is the subject of the new book, “A?Rift in the Clouds”, about the efforts of three judges to read the Reconstruction Amendments to give blacks legal protection.

Chief Justice Taft had a great deal of respect for Trieber, as this letter shows, and corresponded with him on many occasions. Here he requests that Trieber send him an article Trieber has written so that he (Taft) can “plagiarize” from it.

Autograph Letter Signed on his Supreme Court letterhead but datelined from his Pointe a Pic, Canada summer refuge, June 15, 1925, to Judge Trieber. “Judge Dantom attended the Senir Circuit Judge Conference in Washington last week. He told me you had written an article on the effect of the Act of February 13th 1925 on the jurisdiction of the Circuit Courts of Appeals. May I ask you to do me the favor of sending me a copy. I have to write an article on the subject of the act for the Yale Law Journal and I would be willing to plagiarize from so reliable and exact an authority. I hope that you are well, that the great heat has not injuriously affected you, and that you are not working too hard.”