Adrian S. Fisher

Adrian Sanford Fisher (January 21, 1914 – March 18, 1983) was an American lawyer and federal public servant, who served from the late 1930s through the early 1980s.

He was associated with the Department of War and Department of State throughout his professional career.

This document, covering the period from 1920 to November 1937, demonstrated that the pace of re-armament under Adolf Hitler showed that the Germans "were developing an economic system which was only sensible only if there should be a war."

Truman's main disagreement with the Act was its retention of the quota system that began in 1924.

After Congress passed the Act over his veto, he formed the Commission and charged it with looking into new options for immigration and naturalization policy.

Secretary of State Acheson's appointment of Fisher as the State Department's Legal Adviser was unique at the time, because of the closeness of the Acheson/Fisher professional relationship.

In the late 1930s Fisher lived in Arlington, Virginia, in an estate known by the name of Hockley Hall.

This house was a semi-famous "bachelor's house," with rooms rented by Fisher and various housemates such as William Bundy, William Sheldon, John Ferguson, John Oakes, Donald Hiss, Edward Prichard, Jr. and Philip Graham.

Also, Hockley Hall was known as a social venue for the likes of Dean Acheson, Archibald MacLeish and Francis Biddle.

Fisher was known throughout his life by his nickname "Butch", from his early days as a football player for Princeton, lettering in 1933.

He attended elite schools such as Saint Albans and Choate, Princeton University (BA 1934) and Harvard Law School (LLB 1937).

Fisher was admitted to the Tennessee Bar in 1938, and had the distinction of clerking for two U.S. Supreme Court Justices, Louis Brandeis (1938–39) and Felix Frankfurter (1939–40).

Fisher began his legal career with his appointment as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who was then 82 years old.

In early 1939, Brandeis announced his retirement from the Supreme Court, and Fisher was invited to transfer to the chambers of the recently appointed Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.

Following his term as Frankfurter's clerk in 1940, Fisher joined the United States Department of State as the assistant chief of the Foreign Funds Control Division of the State Department, where he served until shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

In early 1942, Fisher and John J. McCloy were assigned to assist implementation of the United States War Department's legal activities for the Japanese American internment programs shortly after the United States entered World War II.

In late 1942, Fisher received an officer's commission, and trained as a bomber navigator in the United States Army Air Forces from 1942 to 1943, with missions over France, Belgium and Germany.

In 1944, he returned to Washington, D.C. as an assistant to the Assistant Secretary of War, John J. McCloy.

In 1944, Fisher again was required to become involved in the U.S. 1942-43 internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast of the United States upon his return from Europe.

At that time, the case of Korematsu v. United States, challenging the U.S. government's power to exclude citizens of Japanese ancestry from military zones, came before the United States Supreme Court.

While the Department of Justice's Herbert Wechsler (an Assistant Attorney General) was in charge of defending the government's position before the Supreme Court, significant consultation with Fisher was required, as he was again with the legal affairs section of the War Department.

During this period, Fisher was involved in critical drafting of the government's brief submitted to the Supreme Court.

He participated in the U.S. government's decision to carry out Japanese-American internment and the international (1945–46) Nuremberg trial, and in State Department Cold War activities during the Harry S. Truman administration.

He was the State Department Legal Adviser under Secretary of State Dean Acheson.

During the John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter administrations, Fisher was directly involved in the negotiations of international nuclear testing and non-proliferation agreements.

Fisher was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to Hubert Fisher and Louise Sanford Fisher.

In 1945 and 1946, Captain Fisher served, along with James H. Rowe, as a legal advisor to former U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle, the United States member of the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg Trial).

Fisher was principal drafter of the Tribunal's memorandum on the Nazi leadership's "conspiracies to engage in crimes against peace."

Upon his return from Europe and exit from the Army Air Force, Fisher served as Solicitor for the U.S. Department of Commerce from 1947 to 1948.

Thereafter, Fisher became general counsel of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1948-49.

He then served as legal advisor (with the rank of Assistant Secretary of State) to the Department of State (serving in the office of Secretary of State Dean Acheson) from 1949 to 1953.

In late 1949, President Truman asked Dean Acheson to concentrate on the question of whether the United States should develop the hydrogen bomb.

Acheson formed a working group under the United States National Security Council (NSC) executive secretary Sidney Souers, consisting of R. Gordon Arneson, Paul Nitze and Fisher, who served as the State Department's legal adviser on the project.

It was Arneson's view that each member of the working group were of one mind.

Fisher's role as Acheson's legal adviser was explained by Michael H. Cordozo, the State Department's Assistant Legal Adviser for Economic Affairs, 1950-52:

"(Acheson) insisted on having, as a legal adviser, a lawyer whose ability as a lawyer and whose judgment in politics and statesmanship could be greatly respected. He got Adrian Fisher for that, and he involved him in all of the political and other activities that he himself was involved in. The Secretary of State always is involved in a lot of controversial things, and here we had the McCarthy era, the attack on the whole concept of Foreign Service and the State Department, and a terrific controversy over what to do about China, who had 'lost China.' Fisher was always at Acheson's right hand when he was dealing with other people about these things. Wherever he went, Fisher's office was backstopping him, getting all the necessary background information so he'd be prepared for any kind of question that came up. Of course, Acheson's own approach to being Secretary of State was such that when you took an agreement to him to be signed, his chief question was 'By what authority do I sign this?' And whoever brought it to him to get it signed, had to be ready with the answer that would satisfy a lawyer -- 'by what legal authority' -- as well as what it provides and so forth."

During 1952, Mr. Fisher also served as legal advisor to the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations in Paris.

In 1952, Fisher was also appointed by President Harry S. Truman as an original commissioner to the President's Commission on Immigration and Naturalization.

The Commission was established in the Executive Office of the President by Executive Order 10392 "Establishing the President's Commission on Immigration and Naturalization".

The specific context for the 1952 commission was the enactment of the McCarren-Walter Act, which was passed over President Truman's veto.