Harold Medina

American federal judge, lawyer, and educator

• Born: February 16, 1888
• Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
• Died: March 14, 1990
• Place of death: Westwood, New Jersey

A successful lawyer and respected legal scholar and educator, Medina became the first Latino federal judge when he was appointed to the U.S. District Court in 1947. During his tenure, he presided over several volatile cases of national significance, and he later served for more than twenty-five years as an appellate judge.

Early Life

Harold Raymond Medina, Sr. (meh-DEE-nah) was descended from Spanish conquistadors. His father, Joaquin Adolfo Medina, grew up on a prosperous plantation on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico before becoming a naturalized American citizen and a successful importer. His mother, Elizabeth Fash Medina, was of Dutch heritage and from a prominent New York family. The elder of two boys, Harold grew up in a middle-class neighborhood. He attended public school in Brooklyn, where during the Spanish-American War he absorbed insults for his Hispanic ancestry. He later graduated in 1905 from a private institution, Holbrook Military Academy, in Ossining, New York.

A brilliant student, Medina in 1909 graduated tenth in his class from Princeton University with a degree in modern languages. He then attended Columbia Law School, rather than Princeton, so he could be closer to his future wife, beautiful socialite Ethel Forde Hillyer, whom he married in 1911. The couple had two sons, Harold Raymond, Jr., and Standish Forde Medina, who both graduated from Princeton and became lawyers. Medina obtained his law degree in 1912, winning a prize for the highest standing in his class. He went into private practice, ultimately rising to senior partnership in the New York firm Medina and Sherpick.

Ambitious and energetic, Medina achieved financial and critical success on three interrelated fronts. Early in his career, he created a comprehensive cram course to assist aspiring attorneys in passing the bar exam. For thirty years, nine out of ten New York lawyers paid $35 apiece to take Medina’s course, which helped make them lawyers and helped make Medina wealthy. He started earning a second source of income in 1915, when he was appointed special lecturer at Columbia Law School, and for years afterward he taught the New York Code of Civil Procedure to a generation of students that included such legal lights as future Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. A third and major source of income was his law practice. During the height of his career, Medina earned more than $100,000 annually, thanks to his willingness to accept—and usually win—difficult, often controversial appeal cases. Between 1912 and 1947, Medina argued more than 1,300 appeals, triumphing in the great majority of cases because of his excellence in strategy, thoroughness of preparation, and dynamic courtroom presence. Medina’s earnings from all sources allowed him to purchase To Windward, a fifty-six-acre country estate at Westhampton, Long Island, where he maintained a plush mansion; houses for his aged widowed mother, his sons, and their families; a separate library; a boathouse; and other amenities.

Life’s Work

In 1947, Medina sacrificed his luxurious lifestyle to take on a more prestigious and, at a salary of just $15,000 per year, much lower-paying role. President Harry S. Truman nominated Medina to be a judge in New York’s busy Southern District, and the U.S. Senate confirmed him unanimously, making Medina the first Hispanic federal judge. During his tenure on the U.S. District Court, from 1947 to1953, Medina presided over numerous high-profile cases. One of the most contentious and longest lasting was the so-called Communist Conspiracy Case of 1949, which revolved around the issue of free political speech. Another was the yearlong United States v. Morgan, et al., also known as the Investment Bankers Case, which charged that seventeen leading Wall Street banking investment companies—including Morgan Stanley & Co., Goldman Sachs, Smith Barney & Co., and Lehman Brothers—had conspired to manipulate and monopolize the market for U.S. securities.

Based on Medina’s masterful handling of such highly publicized cases, President Truman subsequently nominated him as judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Confirmed in 1953 to replace semiretiring chief judge Learned Hand, Medina served actively from 1951 to 1958 and held senior status until 1980, at age ninety-two the oldest person on the federal bench. Medina and his circuit court colleagues—thirteen active judges and various senior-status judges stationed throughout the court’s venue—maintained jurisdiction over the district courts of New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. Medina served alongside such luminaries as future U.S. Supreme Court Justices John M. Harlan II and Thurgood Marshall.

After retiring from public service, Medina returned to his estate to enjoy the remaining years of his life in comfort. Though his wife died at age eighty-three in 1971, he had the constant company of his sons and their children on his Long Island compound. He attended annual reunions at his alma mater, was an avid billiard player, read and collected rare books in several languages for his personal library, and was a bright, enthusiastic conversationalist to the end of his days. The last surviving member of the Princeton graduating class of 1909, Medina died at the age of 102.

Significance

A fixture in the New York legal community for nearly seventy years, Harold Medina built his early reputation by advocating for unpopular causes in defense of civil rights and personal freedom. He often took on authoritarian forces, such as banks (People v. Marcus, 1932-1933) and governmental agencies (MacAdams v. Cohen, 1932). In one of his most famous cases, Cramer v. United States (1942-1945), Medina risked public condemnation and personal safety to go before the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of Anthony Cramer, a naturalized German convicted of treason for associating with Nazi saboteurs in World War II. One of the first Supreme Court decisions involving treason, and a precedent-setter in constitutionally limiting governmental powers during wartime, the case was a victory for Medina and his client, whose conviction was overturned.

Highly esteemed among colleagues for his superb courtroom manner (he vigorously practiced his court presentations before a mirror) and his superlative memory (he argued extemporaneously before juries without notes), Medina served as vice president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. He was also director of the American Judicature Society and president of the Manhattan Lawyers Club. Featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1949 following the Communist Conspiracy Case, Medina received the Columbia Law School Alumni Association Medal for Excellence in 1965. In addition, a chair in procedural law at Columbia Law School was named in his honor.

Bibliography

Howard, J. Woodford, Jr. “Advocacy in Constitutional Choice: The Cramer Treason Case, 1942-1945.” American Bar Foundation Research Journal 11, no. 3 (Summer 1986): 375-413. A detailed examination of one of Medina’s most significant cases, which has contemporary implications in the use of legal weapons when defending national security against perceived political criminals.

Medina, Harold R. Important Features of Pleading and Practice Under the New York Civil Practice Act. Florence, Ky.: Gale Cengage, 2010. This reference book lists about twenty thousand treatises, casebooks, manuals, and other works that Medina compiled regarding American and British domestic and international law.

Vile, John R. Great American Judges: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2003. Contains brief biographies of one hundred state and federal judges, including Medina, who greatly influenced American law.