Book Reviews

Miles Lord: The Maverick Judge Who Brought Corporate America to Justice Roberta Walburn (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017, 400 p., Cloth, $29.95.)

In Miles Lord: The Maverick Judge Who Brought Corporate Amer- ica to Justice, Roberta Walburn tells the story of the man Hubert Humphrey once described as “the people’s judge” and who was perhaps the most consequential (and controversial) judge ever to serve on the US District Court for Minnesota. The book is structured through alternating chapters that juxtapose Lord’s life (1919–2016) with his involvement in what was, at the time in the 1980s, one of the largest tort liability cases in the country—the litigation for the Dalkon Shield intrauterine contraceptive device (IUD). Walburn’s approach reveals the threads that ran through Lord’s life and guided his judicial decision-making. Miles Lord was born on Minnesota’s Iron Range, coming of age during the Great Depression. After serving in the air force during World War II, he attended the University of Minnesota Law School, graduating in 1948. Though not a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s founding generation, as a young attorney Lord entered Hubert Humphrey’s orbit and bankruptcy of A. H. Robins and a judicial review of Lord’s pro- was twice elected Minnesota attorney general. Later, Lord fessional and judicial conduct. (He was exonerated.) served as US district attorney. The activism Lord engaged in openly, many do privately. In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Lord to In Lord’s eyes, the law was not neutral, and he often observed, the federal bench, where he served for nearly two decades. “There is one set of laws for the rich and powerful and another Lord gained a reputation that led one reporter to observe: for the poor and oppressed.” Walburn’s book illustrates that “You will either applaud his conduct on the bench, or you Lord loved a good fight, and that he was ambitious. But he will deplore it.” In 1972, Lord presided over the district court coupled this ambition with lessons learned from a lifetime of case that opened the door for girls to participate with boys in service: that those with the power to make the world a better high school interscholastic athletics, and two years later, the place had a duty to do so. Reserve Mining case, which shut down a taconite processing Walburn’s unfettered access to Lord’s personal papers plant polluting Lake Superior. Both were landmark decisions also reveals the role he maintained in partisan politics—from rooted in Lord’s sense of justice, even if his actions in the lat- recommending Walter Mondale and Muriel Humphrey for ter resulted in the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit their respective US Senate appointments to playing a critical removing him from the case for bias. But it was the Dalkon role in the 1968 presidential election. That year he served as a Shield litigation that cemented Lord’s reputation as an “activ- mediator between the rival campaigns of his close friends Vice ist” judge. President Humphrey and Senator Eugene McCarthy, trying to Peak usage of the birth control device—more than 2.8 work out a compromise over their disagreements on the Viet- million women—occurred in 1974, the same year its manufac- nam War. turer, A. H. Robins Co., stopped selling it. A design flaw caused Walburn’s experience as a journalist, lawyer, and Lord’s law infections that led to septic abortions, hysterectomies, and, in clerk makes for an impressive and engaging work that should more than a dozen cases, death. Robins did not issue a recall appeal to historians and general readers alike. It is as much lest this give credibility to the more than 300,000 lawsuits a biography (Lord’s) as a memoir (Walburn’s) that reads like a filed against it. Despite knowing the device’s health risks, John Grisham thriller. Walburn’s personal friendship with the A. H. Robins refused to admit liability and instead maligned judge lends itself to good storytelling; however, it also leads in the character of victims. When a handful of these cases came places to a noticeable lack of distance between the author and before Lord, he exercised every power in his arsenal (some her subject. Even so, Miles Lord fills a gap in the Minnesota his- explicitly granted, others not) to seek justice for the affected torical literature. women. The ensuing chain of events culminated in the —Joshua Preston

SPRING 2018 43 Book Reviews

Scandinavians in the State House: How Nordic ing state could benefit Immigrants Shaped Minnesota Politics from the qualities Klas Bergman Nordics would bring, (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2017, 312 p., Paper, $19.95.) including piety, thrift, and industriousness. Roughly halfway into Klas Bergman’s comprehensive study Bergman notes that of Nordic influence in the public life of Minnesota, the reader the newly formed comes across a telling yet not surprising passage: Republican Party resonated with these In a 1975 interview with Norwegian national radio, immigrants. The [Walter] Mondale was asked if his Norwegian ancestry party was against influenced his political views: his answer was yes. He the expansion of said he believed in education, good economic policies slavery and for the that create jobs, good health care, and protecting the individual quest for a environment, and some of this stems from those Norwe- better economic and gian roots. And in Minnesota, “while it is not necessary cultural life. Bergman to be of Scandinavian background, I think Minnesotans also notes, however, feel very comfortable with leaders of Scandinavian that many Scandina- background.” vians came to North America thoroughly radicalized and immediately fell into Mondale’s answer is both a paragon of Scandinavian associations such as the Industrial Workers of the World and understatement and a telescopic view into a key component the Communist Party. of Minnesotan identity. To put it simply, one cannot con- Among the meatier portions of the book are the descrip- template, let alone discuss, the political history of the state tions of populism and Progressive tendencies at the turn of the without repeated reference to public figures of Scandinavian twentieth century. Governors such as John Lind (1899–1901) background. Many Americans, Europeans, and others view attracted admiration for their seemingly natural ability to Minnesota as a Scandinavian outpost in the center of North translate European social ideals into an American vocabulary America. This impression became full blown by the mid-1970s of democratic possibilities. Bergman also provides a long- with Time magazine’s iconic August 1973 cover story on Min- overdue reintroduction of John Albert Johnson, who was nesota, “the state that works,” featuring its handsome, young elected governor in 1904 as a Progressive Democrat. In the governor, Wendell Anderson, grinning and holding a fish (that first decade of the twentieth century, Johnson was frequently may or may not have come out of a freezer). spoken of as an ideal presidential candidate; he died early, Author Bergman, a native of Sweden who was educated in however, succumbing to cancer in 1909 at the age of 48. the United States and has spent much of his life in this country, Another notable point that Bergman makes in detail: has done an exceptionally good job of providing specifics to Scandinavians were not and are not of one nationality nor of substantiate a general impression. Bergman boldly ventures one mind. The history of the Nordic countries from the Middle into previously uncharted conceptual territory, methodically Ages until the high period of immigration to the United States chronicling the tendencies, dispositions, and circumstances in the nineteenth century is one of conflict and even warfare. that led immigrants and their descendants from the Nordic Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes tended to be closer to one nations of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland another in Minnesota than they were in the old countries. The into positions of public prominence and political authority in reason largely had to do with a desire for Americanization. Minnesota. Bergman concludes his encyclopedic study with a descrip- Scandinavian immigration owed much to the favorable tion of more recent immigrants to the North Star State. early portraits of the state painted by Swedish writer and trav- Hmong, Somalis, and Hispanics are examined in terms of eler Fredrika Bremer and Swedish immigrant Hans Mattson, neighborhoods, languages, and civic institutions. All such who served as a Union soldier and later headed the state points of reference have clear predicates in Bergman’s earlier bureau of immigration. Bremer, who was friend to Emerson examination of the experiences of Icelanders, Danes, Norwe- and Thoreau, directly suggested after an 1850 visit that Min- gians, Swedes, and Finns. If Scandinavians in the State House nesota would be an ideal new Scandinavia: Swedes would find demonstrates one important point it is that common impres- familiar forests; Norwegians, waters; and Danes, lush pastures. sions become more impressive when seriously explored. Mattson was more practical in his booster approach: the grow- —Paul C. Stone

44 MINNESOTA HISTORY

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