On September 17th, Professor John Q. Barrett was the principal speaker at a United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania program and reenactment, “Trial of the Twentieth Century: The 1935-1937 Tax Trial of Andrew W. Mellon in the Western District of Pennsylvania.”

Professor Barrett is a biographer of Robert H. Jackson. In 1935, when Jackson was Assistant General Counsel in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Internal Revenue, he was chief prosecutor in the Mellon case, a civil proceeding before the Board of Tax Appeals. The government alleged tax payment deficiency. Mr. Mellon, a former U.S. Treasury Secretary and a former U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, claimed overpayment of taxes owed. This was Jackson’s first national-headline case. It perhaps stimulated Mr. Mellon’s late 1936 donation of fabulous art and construction funds for what became the National Gallery of Art. After Mr. Mellon subsequently passed away, the case resulted in a significant judgment against his estate.

April 1935: Robert H. Jackson cross-examining Andrew W. Mellon in the W.D.Pa. courthouse.

Program participants, including U.S. District Court Chief Judge Mark R. Hornak on the left, Professor Barrett third from the left, and U.S. District Court Judge Joy Flowers Conti fourth from the right.