Olney, Richard (1835–1917)

• Author: David Gordon
• Pages: 1850-1851

Page 1850

In 1893 President GROVER CLEVELAND offered the post of ATTORNEY GENERAL to Richard Olney. A Massachusetts Democrat and highly successful railroad lawyer, Olney sought the advice of his major clients. All agreed he should accept the office and one even continued him on the payroll after he took the post, a conflict of interest that reflected the biases Olney allowed to influence his actions in office.

Olney was one of a few lawyers in the country who had litigated the recently passed SHERMAN ANTITRUST ACT;he had successfully defended the Whiskey Trust, and he believed that section 2 of the act was "void because of vagueness, indefiniteness, and ambiguity." While Olney served as attorney general, the Department of Justice initiated no new antitrust suits against business combinations.

Olney is most often remembered for his weak presentation of the government case in UNITED STATES V. E. C. KNIGHT COMPANY (1895). Although the prosecution had been begun under President BENJAMIN HARRISON, Olney

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was responsible for choosing Knight to test the Sherman Act's constitutionality. Even as attorney general he specifically rejected the belief that "the aim and effect of this statute are to prohibit and prevent" trusts, and he contended that "literal interpretation" of the act was "out of the question" because of the act's overbroad terms. His ineffective prosecution contributed to a government loss, crippling enforcement of the Sherman Act for nearly a decade. Olney saw Knight as a vindication of his personal views and as an excuse to ignore the law; although he ought to have chosen a stronger case, the federal judges who so narrowly construed the act must share responsibility for the outcome.

Olney's antipathy to the Sherman Act ran deep. He was determined to break the Pullman strike in 1894, and although he had to rely on the Sherman Act to secure lower court INJUNCTIONS, he abandoned that successful tack in the Supreme Court. He convinced a unanimous Court in IN RE DEBS (1895) to rely instead...