David Andrew Pine

David Andrew Pine (September 22, 1891 – June 11, 1970) was a United States district court judge.

Born in Washington, D.C., Pine earned an LL.B. at the Georgetown University Law School in 1913, then clerked for U.S. Attorney General James McReynolds from 1914 to 1916. He was an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice until 1917, when he entered the United States Army for two years, returning to the Justice Department in 1919. He was in private practice in Washington, D.C. from 1921 to 1934, at which time he again returned to the Justice Department, eventually becoming the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1938–40.

Pine was nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 15, 1940, to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia vacated by Joseph Winston Cox. Pine was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 20, 1940, and received his commission on March 29, 1940. Among the cases which Pine presided over was a 1952 matter which eventually came before the United States Supreme Court as Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. In that case, Pine issued an injunction barring the government from continuing to hold steel plants that it had seized on the order of Harry S. Truman. Truman sought to avert a strike by steel workers which Truman asserted would harm the efforts of the United States in the Korean War. Pine found this to exceed the power of the President, and the Supreme Court ultimately agreed with him, upholding the injunction.

Pine served as chief judge of that court from 1959 to 1961 and assumed senior status on April 2, 1965. He remained in service until his death.

Sources

• David Andrew Pine at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.