Albert Levitt
Albert Levitt was an American judge, law professor, Unitarian minister, attorney and government official. He unsuccessfully ran many times for public office in Connecticut, California and New Hampshire, generally receiving only a small percentage of the vote. While a judge of the District Court of the Virgin Islands in 1935, he ordered that women there must be allowed to register and vote.
Born in Maryland, Levitt joined the U.S. Army at age 17. He then went to seminary and spent several years as a student, eventually gaining degrees from three Ivy League universities. After World War I broke out, he twice served—once in the ambulance corps for the French, and once as a chaplain in the U.S. Army. In the latter capacity, he was wounded and gassed.
After the war, Levitt became a lawyer. While at Harvard Law School, he was instrumental in the drafting of the Equal Rights Amendment. He then began a series of short-term positions teaching law. Eventually, he settled with his wife, the suffragist Elsie Hill, in Connecticut, and involved himself in politics. Though he was never elected to office, the small faction he led affected the outcome in several races, helping to elect Democrat Wilbur Cross as governor in 1930, and helping to defeat him in 1938. In general, his actions aided the Democrats against the Republicans, and he was rewarded for this with a position in the Justice Department under Franklin Delano Roosevelt beginning in 1933. Attorney General Homer Cummings appointed him a judge in 1935, and arranged for him to resume his work at the Justice Department after he resigned from that position the following year. He publicly broke with the Roosevelt administration in 1937, and lost his government job.
After leaving the Justice Department, Levitt challenged the appointment of Hugo Black to the United States Supreme Court under the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution; in its decision, Ex parte Levitt, the court refused to consider his claims, stating that he lacked legal standing to bring them to court. In the early 1940s, he moved to California, and began to run as a fringe candidate in Republican primaries, including in the 1950 United States Senate election in California, finishing sixth out of six, behind the winner, Richard Nixon. He also formed the belief that the Roman Catholic Church was a great danger to American democracy and, in his campaigns, warned against its influence. He died in 1968.
Early life
Levitt was born on March 14, 1887, in Woodbine, Maryland; he was the son of Thomas Reeve Levitt and Ida Alee Levitt. At the age of seventeen, he joined the United States Army and rose to the rank of sergeant. He served in the Hospital Corps, and, from 1906 to 1907, in the Philippines. According to a 1937 news article, Levitt traveled four times around the world as a young man. After leaving the Army, he attended Meadville Theological School, which was run by the Unitarians, and received his Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1911. In 1910, while a student at Meadville, he went on a canoe trip of with one other student from Buffalo to Pittsburgh by way of Baltimore and Washington, D.C. In 1912–1913, he served as assistant pastor at the Unitarian Willow Place Chapel in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, and was available to conduct services in the absence of the minister. In 1913, he graduated with a B.A., cum magnis honoribus, from Columbia University, and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.Levitt served as a lecturer at Columbia after his graduation, crossing the Atlantic to join the American Ambulance Corps in the French Army in 1915. He returned to the United States after several months, and spent a year, from 1915 to 1916, teaching philosophy at Colgate University. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, he joined the U.S. Army again and served from 1917 to 1919 as a chaplain. During his time on the Western Front, he was both wounded and gassed.
Law student and professor
Harvard and the ERA
Levitt had spent a brief period at Harvard as an ROTC instructor; he returned there as a law student in 1919 and received his LL.B. the following year. As well as studying law, he served as minister to the Harvard Unitarian Society. While at Harvard, he came to view Dean Roscoe Pound as his mentor, and, in part due to his romantic relationship with women's rights activist Elsie Hill, became affiliated with the National Woman's Party. Women's rights leader Alice Paul consulted both Pound and Levitt in drafting what became known as the Equal Rights Amendment to give equality to women without eroding special protections. Pound was willing to help, so long as his involvement was not publicized. Levitt, seeking to avoid conflict with existing laws protecting women, drafted at least 75 versions of the ERA for Paul. He also consulted with future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter, who was then counsel to the Washington, D.C., Minimum Wage Board. Frankfurter commented on several drafts, feeling that any version of the ERA would have the side effect of eviscerating current legal protections for women. Levitt attempted to change Frankfurter's mind, but was unsuccessful. He wrote to Paul, "The net result of the interview is nothing."Although both Pound and Frankfurter had given Levitt advice on condition that their names not be used, NWP activists incorrectly claimed that the two had approved the text of the ERA as suitable for either legislation or constitutional amendment. Levitt apologized to both, and wrote Paul that he could no longer consult anyone he trusted about the ERA for fear of being betrayed again. Nevertheless, influenced by Hill, he continued his work for Paul until the end of 1921. On December 24, 1921, by now working at the University of North Dakota, he married Hill in Chicago. With Levitt's duties keeping him in North Dakota, and Hill's keeping her in Washington, they planned to spend time together in the summer in her native Connecticut, but otherwise initially planned to live apart, both being busy with their own careers. The wedding was confidential, known only to a few friends and associates, until the matter became public the following month. Levitt proclaimed himself the luckiest man in the world, lucky because he had married a feminist, who would not allow the husband to be a czar.
Roving professor
Levitt resigned his chaplaincy of the Harvard Unitarians in June 1920 to accept a position as professor of law at the George Washington University Law School. While Levitt was there, in 1921, President Woodrow Wilson appointed him as a member of the annually-appointed Assay Commission, composed of citizens and officials who met at the Philadelphia Mint to test the previous year's coinage. During the summer of 1921, he was a lecturer on the circuit of the Radcliffe Chautauqua System. After a year at George Washington, he moved to the University of North Dakota, then returned to school himself at Yale Law School, receiving his J.D. in 1923. From 1923 to 1924, he served as a Special Assistant Attorney General, working in the War Transactions Section of the Justice Department.In 1924, he was hired as assistant professor of law at Washington and Lee University. He made a deep impression there as, according to the school's web site, "likely the most unusual, colorful, and, some would contend, eccentric law teacher in the history of Washington and Lee" but also as a "teacher of great ability". Levitt and Hill had a daughter in late 1924, and for the first time, the two lived together on a permanent basis, at Washington and Lee. Hill retained her maiden name and their daughter was known by the surname "Hill-Levitt", unconventional for the conservative southern town of Lexington, Virginia. Levitt was involved in conflict with the law school dean, and when his contract expired in 1927, it was not renewed.
While at Washington and Lee, Levitt was one of two U.S. delegates to the International Penal Congress in July 1926 at Brussels. After his return to the United States, Levitt prepared a new law code, which it was suggested that each delegate prepare for consideration by the next congress, in 1929 at Vienna. In 1927, Levitt won a $500 first prize offered by the publisher of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy for an essay on the legal and social aspects of the murder in the book.
Connecticut activist and federal official (1927–1937)
Activist professor
Levitt next taught law at Brooklyn Law School of St. Lawrence University, from 1927 to 1930. Residing in Redding, Connecticut, he was admitted to the state bar in 1928. He began to involve himself in public affairs, switching from the Democratic to the Republican Party over his support for Prohibition. He stated that he had been a Republican until World War I, but had been impressed by Wilson's efforts to keep the nation out of war, and thereafter had remained a Democrat because of a close personal friendship with the 1924 Democratic candidate for president, John W. Davis. He announced in 1928 that he would challenge the incumbent Republican representative in Connecticut's 4th district, Schuyler Merritt, but fell short of the necessary petition signatures to be listed on the ballot.In August 1929, Levitt began a battle to compel the Connecticut Attorney General to seek to oust the members of the Public Utilities Commission. Levitt alleged the commission was in violation of state law by failing to require the New Haven Railroad to eliminate at-grade crossings at the pace required by law. The commission felt that getting rid of the crossings was too expensive. This touched off a legal battle that went to Connecticut Superior Court at least six times and to the Supreme Court of Connecticut twice, and, despite initial success, eventually ended in a loss for Levitt.
Fueled by his early success in his actions against the PUC, Levitt sought the Republican nomination for governor of Connecticut in 1930, decrying the influence of the state's Republican political boss, J. Henry Roraback. When the caucuses to choose delegates to the state nominating convention were held on September 5, 1930, Levitt was overwhelmingly defeated, electing only three delegates, none from his hometown of Redding. Just over a week later, Levitt was fired as a law professor, the dean stating that it was not due to his political activities, but because shrinking enrollment made his services unnecessary, and that "in view of the political activities that confront Prof. Levitt, he could not carry on his class work".
At the state convention in Hartford on September 16, only four delegates supported Levitt, and Lieutenant Governor Ernest E. Rogers won the nomination. The following day, Levitt reacted by praising the Democratic candidate for governor, Wilbur L. Cross, and later stated he would vote for Cross. In October, he sought the Republican nomination for one of Redding's two seats in the Connecticut House of Representatives, but at the caucus received only 9 votes against 115 and 112 for the winners, with a third candidate finishing ahead of Levitt with 14 votes. Levitt then filed as an independent. In the general election on November 4, Cross was elected governor. Levitt was defeated in Redding, polling 98 votes as the two winning Republicans each received 376 votes. Despite the defeats, the New Britain Herald credited Levitt with influencing the gubernatorial election's outcome.