George Weston Anderson

Infobox Person
name = George Weston Anderson


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birth_date = September 1, 1861
birth_place = New Hampshire, USA
death_date = February 14, 1938
death_place = USA
occupation = Judge
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parents =
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George Weston Anderson (September 1, 1861 - February 14, 1938) was a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

A native of New Hampshire, Anderson attended Williams College and the Boston University School of Law and then went into private practice as a lawyer in Boston, Massachusetts. From 1914 to 1917 he served as United States Attorney for Massachusetts, followed by one year as a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson named Anderson as a Judge of the First Circuit. He served as an active judge for 13 years and is remembered for, among other things, dissenting from the court's upholding some of the convictions arising from the "Red Scare" of 1918-19. In June 1920 he effectively ended the Palmer raids by ordering the discharge of twenty suspected Communist radicals. He concluded that there was no evidence that the Communist Party of the United States has urged a violent government overthrow, and strongly critiqued the Department of Justice for entrapment and failure to follow legal procedures. [cite book|last=Stone|first=Geoffrey R.|title=Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime From the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism|publisher=Norton|location=New York|date=2004|pages=225-26|isbn=978-0393058802 ] [cite book|last=Morris|first=Norval|coauthors=David J. Rothman|title=The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|date=1995|pages=358|isbn=9780195118148]

Anderson served as an active judge until 1931, when he took what is now referred to as senior status. He died in 1938.

References

###@@@KEY@@@###succession box| title=Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit| before= Frederic Dodge | after=James Madison Morton, Jr. | years=1918-1938|