Herbert Wechsler - Career

Career

In 1940, Wechsler went to Washington D.C. to work for the Justice Department. He argued five cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court during that period. Among these, he took part in arguing Korematsu v. United States, as Assistant Attorney General, on the side of the United States government in its wartime internment of citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry. During World War II, Wechsler served as assistant attorney general in charge of the War Division. During 1945-1946, he was a principal assistant to U.S. Judge Francis Biddle and U.S. Alternate Judge John J. Parker at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg (the trial of the principal Nazi war criminals). He then returned to Columbia, where he remained an active professor until 1978 and then took emeritus status.

In 1959, Wechsler delivered his Holmes lecture at Harvard Law School entitled "Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law". It was also around this time that Wechsler authored a number of casebooks that changed ideas about criminal law and the federal courts. In 1963, Wechsler's proposed official draft of the Model Penal Code was approved, bringing to a close a decade-long project at the American Law Institute. His wife, Doris Wechsler, has noted that he considered the Model Code to be his greatest achievement. Shortly after the approval of the Model Code, Wechsler was named director of the Institute, a position which he held until 1984.

In 1964, Wechsler argued the seminal case New York Times v. Sullivan before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court in that case unanimously held that the First and Fourteenth Amendments barred awards of damages to a public official for defamation relating to his or her official conduct unless the public official proves "actual malice."

During Wechsler's tenure as director, the American Law Institute completed the second restatement of the Conflict of Laws, Contracts, Judgments, and Torts, as well as the original restatement of Foreign Relations Law of the United States and large parts of the Second Restatement of Property. The Institute also conducted various studies in federal taxation and completed the Federal Securities Code, the Model Land Development Code, the Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure, the Study of the Division of Jurisdiction Between State and Federal Courts, and made major revisions to the Uniform Commercial Code. The ALI's Principles of Corporate Governance and the current Restatement of Foreign Relations Law of the United States were also conceived, initiated, and developed under his direction.

Following his retirement as director of the ALI in 1984, Wechsler remained active in the Institute's activities as a member of the council until his death in 2000.