Stanley Reed

Stanley Reed lived a small-town life from a well-to-do family in rural Kentucky. Though the beneficiary of Republican appointments, Reed also won praise for his work in the Roosevelt Justice Department. He was appointed by Roosevelt as solicitor general in part because the president was persuaded that Reed could convince a conservative Supreme Court that his New Deal legislation was constitutional. It is said that when Reed approached the lectern in his first oral argument as solicitor general, he fainted dead away. Roosevelt's legislation did not fare much better. Roosevelt promoted Reed to the High Court in 1938.