Arthur Garfield Hays (December 12, 1881 – December 14, 1954) was an American lawyer and champion of civil liberties issues, best known as a co-founder and general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union and for participating in notable cases including the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. He was a member of the Committee of 48 and a contributor to The New Republic. In 1937, he headed an independent investigation of an incident in which 19 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in Ponce, Puerto Rico, when police fired at them. His commission concluded the police had behaved as a mob and committed a massacre. Background Arthur Garfield Hays was born on December 12, 1881, in Rochester, New York. Three months earlier, the death of James A. Garfield had installed Chester A. Arthur in the U.S. presidency, and Hays' name combined those of the two men. His father and mother, both of German Jewish descent, belonged to prosperous families in the clothing manufacturing industry. In 1902, he graduated from Columbia College, where he was one of the early members of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. In 1905, he received an LLB from Columbia Law School and was admitted to the New York bar. Career In 1905, Hays formed a law firm with two former classmates. He and his partners gained prominence during World War I representing interests of ethnic Germans in the US who were discriminated against because Germany was an enemy of the Allies during the war. In 1914-1915, he practiced law in London. Hays was active in civil liberties issues. In 1920 (or as early as 1912), was hired as general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. From this point, his career had two tracks: he vigorously defended the individual liberty of victims of discriminatory laws, and he also kept private work. He became a wealthy lawyer who represented the interests of power and fame (his more prominent clients ranged from Wall Street brokers and best-selling authors to notorious gamblers and the Dionne quintuplets). Hays took part in numerous notable cases, including the Sweet segregation case in Detroit as well as the Scopes trial (often called the "monkey trial") in 1925, in which a school teacher in Tennessee was tried for teaching evolution;<ref name=larson> {{cite book | last = Larson | first = Edward John | title = Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and