Justice for Sale: Graft, Greed, and a Crooked Federal Judge in 1930s Gotham

Gary Stein

Jul 2023 · Rowman & Littlefield

Ebook

448

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About this ebook

Martin T. Manton was a corrupt federal appeals court judge in New York who was convicted in 1939 and sent to prison. At the time, this was a hugely important story: Manton was considered the highest-ranking judge in the United States after the nine Justices of the Supreme Court, and was nearly appointed to that august body in 1922. Yet his story has never been told in book-length form before, and never with the benefit of such exhaustive research. More than just a biography, Justice for Sale examines Manton’s misconduct in the context of the culture of corruption and organized crime that permeated New York City in the first part of the twentieth century. Dozens of others—prominent business executives, leading Wall Street lawyers, accountants, bankers, fixers, con men, another federal judge—participated in Manton’s crimes. The book profiles these unscrupulous and often colorful characters as well. It wasn’t until Manhattan D.A. and future presidential candidate Thomas Dewey’s successful pursuit of Manton, a federal grand jury investigation, and a sensational prosecution and trial in federal court that shocked the nation that Manton and his corrupt schemes were finally brought down.

About the author

Gary Stein has been a practicing lawyer in New York for 35 years since graduating from NYU School of Law. For nearly nine years, he was a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and served as Chief of Appeals of that Office, appearing regularly before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that Manton once headed. He is now a lawyer in private practice in New York City. Gary has published numerous articles and book reviews on law and legal history in, among other publications, the Washington Post, Just Security, Morning Consult, the Jewish Review of Books, Constitutional Commentary, the NYU Law Review, the NYU Journal of Legislation & Public Policy, the New York Law Journal, and the Business Crimes Bulletin. He has twice received the Burton Award for Distinguished Legal Writing.

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