Ashton Fox Embry (February 21, 1883 – November 6, 1965)[1] was a law clerk for Justice Joseph McKenna of the Supreme Court of the United States who resigned in 1919 after being accused of leaking information about pending cases to investors on Wall Street. A federal grand jury indicted Embry, but he pleaded not guilty; the Justice Department dropped the charged a decade later due to a lack of trustworthy witnesses.
Early life
editAshton Fox Embry was born to Wallace and Minerva Embry in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, on February 21, 1883. He obtained a clerical position in the Department of Justice and rose quickly through the ranks. In 1908, he accepted a position clerking for Edward T. Sanford, a recently appointed federal judge in Tennessee; he later returned to Washington, where he served as the Solicitor General's stenographer. At the age of twenty-seven, he became a law clerk to Justice Joseph McKenna of the Supreme Court of the United States. In that position, Embry engaged mostly in clerical work, but he and his fellow clerks had access to the Court's opinions before they had been publicly released. He served as a clerk for nearly nine years, during which time he graduated from National University School of Law.[2][3]
Scandal
edit- ^ "Ashton Fox Embry, 82; Of Pioneer Pasco Family". Tampa Bay Times. November 9, 1965. p. 24. Retrieved May 3, 2022.
- ^ Owens, John B. (2004). "The Clerk, the Thief, His Life as a Baker: Ashton Embry and the Supreme Court Leak Scandal". Journal of Supreme Court History. 27 (1): 14–44. doi:10.1111/1540-5818.00033. ISSN 1059-4329.
- ^ Cushman, Clare; Peppers, Todd C. (2015-12-03). Of Courtiers and Kings: More Stories of Supreme Court Law Clerks and Their Justices. University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-8139-3727-4.