John H. Pickering Dies at 89; Attorney Co-Founded D.C. Firm

John Pickering, left, Bruce Bromley and Stanley Temko, as legal counsel for steel companies, emerge from the Supreme Court. Pickering, who died March 19, co-founded the law firm Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering in 1962. (Harris S. Ewing)

John H. Pickering, 89, a renowned appellate lawyer and founding partner of Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering, which would become one of the city's leading law firms, died March 19 at the Washington Home hospice after a stroke. He lived in Bethesda.

Mr. Pickering, who was still working full time this year, argued many cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, and his legal legacy hinged on matters as varied as presidential authority and race as a college admissions factor.

Mr. Pickering amassed a formidable reputation, not just for his roster of clients in the corporate world but also for his emphasis on pro bono work. The latter was the lasting influence of an early mentor, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy, for whom Mr. Pickering clerked as a young man.

His first important case before the high court came in 1952. President Harry S. Truman, fearing a strike by steelworkers during the Korean War, issued an executive order placing his commerce secretary in charge of the steel companies, which included Bethlehem Steel and U.S. Steel.

The lawsuit, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, was a case study in legal agility. After holding that Truman's move was unconstitutional, a U.S. District Court judge issued a preliminary injunction preventing the commerce secretary from continuing the seizure.

A few hours later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit stayed the injunction and asked the government to file its appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court by the next day.

Mr. Pickering told the publication Legal Times that he and co-counsels for the other steel companies decided to draft their own appeal, staying up all night to ensure that theirs would reach the high court first. That was important.

Arriving at 9 a.m., they bested the government attorneys by an hour. "Under Court rules then in place, by filing first, the industry had the right to open and close the arguments. The industry won in a 6-3 decision," Legal Times wrote.

Mr. Pickering said the majority opinion written by Justice Hugo L. Black, which cited the sole lawmaking power of Congress, was taken nearly verbatim from the young lawyer's brief.

John Harold Pickering was born Feb. 27, 1916, in Harrisburg, Ill., where his father became a bank executive. His parents urged him toward a professional career. Admittedly sickened by the sight of blood, he chose the law over medicine.

After graduating from the University of Michigan and its law school, he worked briefly in New York for the law firm that is now Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, where he befriended future partner Lloyd Cutler.

In 1941, he moved to Washington to clerk for Murphy, a former Michigan governor known as a defender of civil liberties.

"I grew up as an only child in a home where my father was upset with some of President Roosevelt's New Deal legislation because it adversely affected his business," he told an interviewer. "A lot of what I heard was fairly conservative. Whatever latent social conscience I may have had was brought to the fore as a result of my association with Justice Murphy. His insistence that the law be used as a tool for the public good couldn't help but have an influence on me."

Mr. Pickering agreed to represent an indigent client before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1946 -- his first case before the high court. "I couldn't have said no even if I'd wanted to," he said. "So I argued my first case in the Supreme Court. I was brought back to earth the following week. My second court appearance was a traffic case in the old municipal court. I defended a chauffeur on a change of lane violation -- and I lost."