Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Gunther R. Lessing
President Roosevelt regrets to inform Gunther R. Lessing that he cannot address the forum of Yale Law School.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1908-01-07
Your TR Source
Yale Law School
Simeon E. Baldwin, Theodore Roosevelt, and their 1910-1911 controversy over the Federal Employers’ Liability Act
Charles C. Goetsch examines the legal, philosophical, and political dispute between Theodore Roosevelt and Simeon E. Baldwin, a Yale Law School professor, Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors, and Governor of Connecticut. He details the conservative legal outlook of Baldwin and how this view clashed with the progressive political beliefs of Roosevelt. Goetsch shows how a legal dispute over the constitutionality of the Federal Employers Liability Act extended from the courts to the 1910 election campaign where Roosevelt’s rhetoric prompted Baldwin to consider a libel suit against the former president.
Two pictures, one of Simeon E. Baldwin and the other of Theodore Roosevelt speaking from the platform of a train car, are included in the article.
A listing of the officers and the members of the executive, finance, and Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace committees of the Theodore Roosevelt Association is included in the article as well as an advertisement for the Roosevelt Savings Bank of Garden City, New York.