Oral Histories
Interview of Oscar Lawler
Assistant United States attorney general.
- Subtitle:
- Oscar Lawler: Los Angeles Attorney
- Series:
- Interviews not in a series, part one
- Topic:
- Politics and Government
- Biographical Note:
- Assistant United States attorney general.
- Interviewee:
- Lawler, Oscar, $d 1875-1966
- Supporting Documents:
- Records relating to the interview are located in the office of the UCLA Library's Center for Oral History Research.
- Language:
- English
- Copyright:
- Interviewee Retained Copyright
- Abstract:
- Family's move to Los Angeles, 1888; early contact with lawyers while working as hallboy at California Club, ca. 1890; federal district court at Commercial and Main streets; decision to enter legal profession; influence of Henry O'Melveny and Judge W. H. Clark; court reporter; admission to bar and early legal career; Blanton Duncan ranch and litigation over estate; Los Angeles and Santa Monica railroad; U.S. attorney for California, 1905-7, and assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, 1909-11; Imperial Valley land-fraud case; President William Howard Taft, Gifford Pinchot, Richard Ballinger, Louis Glavis, and Cunningham Coal case; return to private practice; involvement in trials of McNamara brothers following Los Angeles Times bombing, 1910, and Clarence Darrow's subsequent perjury trial; George Bixby's defense; injury when home bombed, 1919; reminiscences of early political activity in Los Angeles; "bloody eleventh precinct" of Los Angeles; American Protestant Association's anti-Catholic campaigns; relationship with Hiram W. Johnson; opinions of Frank Shaw's political career; friendship with Will Rogers.