Wickersham Commission

Russ Immarigeon

In May 1929, President Herbert Hoover appointed George W. Wickersham, who had been attorney general under President William Howard Taft, to chair the eleven-member National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (NCLOE). Hoover had first proposed the Wickersham Commission, as it was called, in his inaugural speech in 1929, and it was the first federal commission or task force to study crime and law enforcement issues. President Hoover was concerned about an increasing level of disobedience of law, abuses in law enforcement practices, and the growth of organized crime. Although his primary concerns were linked to Prohibition, the commission eventually addressed broader issues. In addition to Wickersham, members of the commission included Henry W. Anderson, president of the Virginia Bar Association; Newton D. Baker, President Woodrow Wilson's secretary of war and a Cleveland attorney; Ada L. Comstock, the president of Radcliffe College; William S. Kenyon, a judge with the United ...

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