Albert Ernest Jenner Jr. (June 20, 1907 – September 18, 1988) was an American lawyer and one of the name partners at the law firm of Jenner & Block. He served as assistant counsel to the Warren Commission; as a member of the U.S. National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence; and as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate Scandal and the impeachment process against Richard Nixon.
Background
Jenner was born in Chicago—his father was a police officer with the Chicago Police Department. Jenner attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (B.A. 1929). To help pay his way through college, Jenner earned money by competing as a professional boxer. He was also the circulation editor at the Daily Illini. It was while working on the Daily Illini that Jenner met his future wife, Nadine Newbill.
After college, he studied at the University of Illinois College of Law, receiving his LL.B. in 1930. Following law school, he served as the reporter for the Illinois Civil Practice Act. He joined the firm of Poppenheusen, Johnston, Thompson and Cole (the precursor of Jenner & Block) in 1933 and became a partner of the firm in 1939. Jenner thrived at the firm and, in 1947, at age 40, he became the president of the Illinois State Bar Association. He would later go on to serve as the eighth president of the American College of Trial Lawyers.
Years as prominent attorney
In his practice at Poppenheusen, Johnston, Thompson and Cole, Jenner would develop relationships with several prominent clients. Already by the 1940s, Jenner had become the top earner at the firm. In 1955, he was rewarded by becoming a name partner at the firm. (The firm eventually became known as "Jenner & Block" in 1964.) As a lawyer, Jenner was dedicated to pro bono work and, in the 1960s, he supported partner Prentice Marshall's efforts to found Jenner & Block's pro bono program, one of the first in the country. Jenner had a history of representing figures from Jack Rubenstein's (AKA Jack Ruby) criminal milieu, such as Allen Dorfman, an insurance agency owner, and a consultant to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) Central States Pension Fund who was a close associate of longtime IBT President Jimmy Hoffa, and associated with organized crime via the Chicago Outfit. Dorfman was convicted on several felony counts, and was murdered in 1983. Jenner was counsel for General Dynamics in 1963 when it was deeply involved in a series of scandals in Texas that were exposed by the U.S. Department of Justice.
In the early 1950s, President Harry S. Truman appointed Jenner to the Civil Service Commission Loyalty Review Board, which had been established by Executive Order 9835 in 1947.
In 1960, the Supreme Court of the United States appointed Jenner to the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a post he would hold until 1970.
Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Jenner was named as assistant counsel to the Warren Commission. Along with Wesley J. Liebeler, Jenner was appointed and performed the "Area III" assignment, "Lee Harvey Oswald's Background."
In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court named Jenner chairman of the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Evidence—he would continue in this post until 1975.
In 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Jenner to the U.S. National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, which Johnson established in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy to study the causes of violence in the U.S.
1968 also saw Jenner argue his first major case at the U.S. Supreme Court, Witherspoon v. Illinois. In the following years, he would argue Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite (1970); Reliance Electric Co. v. Emerson Electric Co. (1972); Gonzales v. Automatic Employees Credit Union (1974); and Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese for the United States of America and Canada v. Milivojevich (1976). Jenner himself was mentioned as a preferred candidate for the Supreme Court by Johnson's Secretary of Defense, Clark Clifford, over Johnson's choice, Homer Thornberry. With the impending retirement of Chief Justice Earl Warren, Johnson hoped to elevate Associate Justice Abe Fortas to that post and Thornberry to Fortas' seat. Clifford thought Jenner would be a more acceptable candidate for Senate Republicans than Thornberry and help make them more amenable to Fortas as Chief Justice. Fortas' nomination was derailed by various scandals and withdrawn, which also ended Thornberry's nomination.