the legal existence of the Ku Klux Klan in California. Kenny also served as a Municipal Court Judge and later a Superior Court Judge in Los Angeles, California. He served in the California State Senate from 1939 to 1943. Private practice Kenny resigned his judgeship. In 1939, he dissolved a law partnership with Paul Vallee and Lawrence Beilensen. He set up a new partnership with Morris E. Cohen, which lasted until 1948. Robert O. Curran joined the firm but left to fight in World War II; Robert S. Morris replaced him. Clients included William Schneiderman, head of the California section of the Communist Party USA; Kenny helped him with citizenship papers in 1940, a case he lost but which Wendell Willkie helped win on appeal in 1943. Attorney General of California In 1942, Kenny was elected Attorney General of California, beating Louis H. Burke, and served one term to 1947. Under Kenny in this period, Robert B. Powers worked as "coordinator of law enforcement agencies". In 1946, Kenny sought the Democratic nomination for Governor, but was defeated by Earl Warren. Although Warren was a Republican, California law at that time permitted a candidate to run in both primaries, a practice known as cross-filing. Warren also won the Republican nomination that year and went on to score an easy general election victory. NLG, Hollywood Ten, and HUAC In 1937, he supported Franklin Delano Roosevelt's attempt at "court-packing" of the United States Supreme Court in FDR's Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937. "Out of that battle grew the National Lawyers Guild" (NLG), wrote the New York Times in 1976 at Kenny's death. On February 22, 1937, when the NLG formed, Kenny was a founding member. In 1940, Kenny became national resident of the NLG through 1948. As NLG state president, he became involved in the aftermath of the Zoot Suit Riots. (Kenny was also a member of the NLG's predecessor, the International Juridical Association.) In May 1945, while still attorney general Kenny accompanied Bartley Crum and Martin Popper to the founding session of the United Nations in San Francisco, where they appeared as National Lawyer Guild "official' consultants to the American delegation at the behest of the United States Department of State. In 1946, Kenny returned to private practice. In 1947, NLG members Charles Katz and Ben Margolis asked Kenny to become lead counsel and Crum his second for the "Unfriendly Nineteen"