Dean Griswold Appointed Solicitor General

Erwin Nathaniel Griswold, 13th Dean of the Law School, will be the next Solicitor General of the United States, President Johnson announced Saturday at his Texas ranch.

Griswold, who has presided over 21 years of expansion and innovation at the nation's most venerable legal academy, will be nominated to succeed Thurgood Marshall. Today, Marshall will sit as the first Negro Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

As Solicitor General, Griswold will be in charge of all the cases argued by the federal government in the Supreme Court. Of the 80 or so Supreme Court cases in which the government is a litigant each term, the Solicitor General himself argues approximately 20. The Solicitor General's office--part of the Department of Justice--also authorizes all appeals by the government within the federal judicial system.

It is expected Griswold will resign his Harvard post--which he has held since 1946--once his nomination is confirmed by the U.S. Senate. As a life-long Republican who backed President Johnson in 1964 and a lawyer with a worldwide reputation, Griswold should meet little opposition on Capitol Hill.

His appointment came as a big surprise to the Harvard community. His longtime associate, A. James Casner, the Law School's Associate Dean, said late Sunday, "It's kind of a shock, but from the standpoint of the country and the legal profession, it's a great appointment." I knew the Dean was going somewhere this weekend, but didn't know this would happen."

President Pusey commented, "It's an indication of great respect. The office is an honor to the Dean and to Harvard."

Archibald Cox '34, Samuel Williston Professor of Law and Solicitor General under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, said, "It's unfortunate for us to lose him, but you can be sure that it's a fine appointment."

Actually, Griswold will be no stranger to the office be will now head.

In 1929, he graduated at the head of his class from the Law Schol, where he also headed the top-drawer Law Review. For the next five years, he was a staff lawyer in the Solicitor General's office where he won a measure of fame arguing complicated tax cases before the Supreme Court.

In 1934, he returned to Harvard, where he has taught taxation ever since. In 1946, he succeeded James M. Landis as Dean.

Currently, he is a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. He is a past president of the Association of American Law Schools and a past vice president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Griswold's two most notable personal characteristics are his Puritan stead-fastness and his rock-solid mien.

During the last few years, in particular, he came under sharp student criticism for what many felt was his recalcitrant attitude toward any significant change in Law School grading and extra-curricular activity procedures.

Griswold, however, chose a student-faculty committee which probed many of the student complaints; and more important, established channels of communications that previously had not existed.

During the Law School's 150th anniversary celebration last week, Griswold gave what many considered his greatest speech. Possibly in response to criticism that the Law School had become too concerned with technical aspects of the law, Griswold told an appreciative crowd, "A dean feels some obligation of leadership, and if the Harvard Law School, through its Faculty activity and teaching, could shift its concern from the narrow objectives of much traditional legal scholarship, we might increase our contribution