Case Changed History And Defined "Lawyering"

July 26, 2012 – From 1937 until 1963, Lyndon Baines Johnson served as Congressman, Senator and Majority Leader and Vice President; and, upon the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, LBJ became the 35th President of the United States.

That rise to power would not have happened had he not won the Texas Democratic Party's U.S. senatorial primary runoff election held Saturday, August 28, 1948; and because that election was sharply disputed, Johnson would not have won if he had not prevailed in the ensuing litigation.

Over three furious weeks in September 1948, the lawyers for LBJ and for former governor Coke Stevenson, his opponent, sought and obtained successive, trumping injunctions in state and federal courts until finally a U.S. Supreme Court justice ended the matter by entering an unusual stay that ensured Johnson's victory.