Charles Antone Horsky

Charles Antone Horsky (March 22, 1910 – August 20, 1997) served as the Advisor on National Capital affairs under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and was a partner at the law firm of Covington & Burling for nearly forty years. In his role at the White House and thereafter, he helped pave the way for home rule of the District of Columbia at a time when much of the city’s governance was controlled by the U.S. Congress.

Horsky was born in Helena, Montana to Joseph T. Horsky and Margaret Bowden Horksy. His father was a state district judge in Montana. His mother was the daughter of English immigrants and died when he was 10 years old. Horsky grew up in Helena, and graduated from the University of Washington where he worked in a garage parking cars nearly every day. At the suggestion of his political science professor, he applied to Harvard Law School. Horsky said at the time that he didn't know where Harvard was on a map. He was accepted and later was elected President of the Law Review, and graduated in 1934.

Justice Felix Frankfurter, then a professor at Harvard and early mentor to Horsky, assigned him to clerk for Judge Augustus N. Hand on the 2nd Circuit in New York. Horsky worked with Judge Hand on various cases, several of which were patent cases. After a year, Judge Hand recommended that Horsky work for Stanley Reed, the new Solicitor General. Horsky went on to serve in the Solicitor General’s office from 1935-37 before moving to Covington, Burling, Rublee, Acheson & Shorb (currently Covington & Burling), a leading law firm in the District of Columbia where he rose to be a partner and worked on and off for nearly forty years.

Horsky's lectures to the Northwestern University School of Law in 1952 were collected in a book titled The Washington Lawyer.

During World War II, Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 of the U.S. Army required all Japanese Americans to report to internment camps for confinement. Fred Korematsu stayed in San Leandro, California, actively refusing to obey the order. He was arrested and convicted of violating the Order. The American Civil Liberties Union handled the appeal, and in 1944 Horsky, who founded the DC branch of the ACLU, argued the case before the United States Supreme Court. He claimed that the Order was unconstitutional and that the DeWitt Report, which outlined reasons for the necessary removal of Japanese Americans, was false and misleading. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the United States 6 to 3, upholding the constitutionality of the Order. In 1984, Mr. Korematsu had the previous case reexamined through a writ of coram nobis. The court ruled in his favor and overturned his previous conviction.

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