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National Lawyers Guild

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is a progressive public interest association of lawyers, law students, paralegals, jailhouse lawyers, law collective members, and other activist legal workers, in the United States. The group was founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association (ABA) in protest of that organization's exclusionary membership practices and conservative political orientation. They were the first predominantly white US bar association to allow the admission of minorities to their ranks. The group sought to bring more lawyers closer to the labor movement and progressive political activities (e.g., the Farmer-Labor Party movement), to support and encourage lawyers otherwise "isolated and discouraged," and to help create a "united front" against Fascism.[1]

Formation

1937

Legal society

132 Nassau St., Ste 922,
New York, New York

  • United States

Elena L. Cohen

Pooja Gehi, Executive Director

nlg.org

The group declares itself to be "dedicated to the need for basic and progressive change in the structure of our political and economic system ... to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests."[2] During the McCarthy era, the organization was accused of operating as a communist front group.

to eliminate racism;

to safeguard and strengthen the rights of workers, women, farmers and minority groups, upon whom the welfare of the entire nation depends;

to maintain and protect our civil rights and liberties in the face of persistent attacks upon them;

to use the law as an instrument for the protection of the people, rather than for their repression.

International Labor Defense

International Juridical Association

(CCR)

Center for Constitutional Rights

American Bar Association

American Constitution Society

Federalist Society

(chairman of Special Committee on Un-American Activities). "145. National Lawyers Guild", pp. 1267–1279 in Appendix — Part IX: Communist Front Organizations, with Special Reference to the National Citizens Political Action Committee (Fourth Section and Fifth Section: pp. 1049–1648) of Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States: Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Seventy-Eighth Congress, Second Session, on H. Res. 282. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1944

Martin Dies

and Eugene M. Tobin (editors); Ramsey Clark (foreword). The National Lawyers Guild: From Roosevelt Through Reagan. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988. ISBN 0877224889

Ann Fagan Ginger

and Tim Ledwith (editors), A History of the National Lawyers Guild: 1937–1987 (New York: National Lawyers Guild, 1987)

Victor Rabinowitz

(chair of the House Un-American Activities Committee). Report on the National Lawyers Guild: Legal Bulwark of the Communist Party (Report No. 3123 of the 81st Congress, 2nd Session, of the House of Representatives). Washington, DC: Committee on Un-American Activities of the U. S. House of Representatives, 1950.

John S. Wood

Finan, Christopher M. From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America. Boston: Beacon Press, 2007.

Heard, Alex. The Eyes of Willie McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in the Jim Crow South. New York: Harper, 2010.

Lobel, Jules. Success Without Victory: Lost Legal Battles and the Long Road to Justice in America. New York: New York University Press, 2003.

Swidler, Joseph Charles and Henderson, A. Scott. Power and the Public Interest: The Memoirs of Joseph C. Swidler. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002.

www.nlg.org/

National Lawyers Guild website

: Labadie Collection – National Lawyers Guild Review

University of California's Bancroft Collection

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives, Bobst Library, New York University, New York City.

Finding Aid for the Archives of the National Lawyers Guild Records

at The Bancroft Library

Preliminary Inventory of the National Lawyers Guild Records, 1936–1999