Joseph Welch Article Index for
Joseph
Website Links For
Joseph
 

Information About

Joseph Welch




On the 30th day of the hearings, McCarthy accused Fred Fisher , one of the junior attorneys on the case, of association (while in college) with the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a group which the U.S. Attorney General at the time was seeking to designate as a Communist Front organization (see Army-McCarthy Hearings ). Welch wrote off Fisher's association with the NLG as a youthful indiscretion and famously rebuked: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch cut him off and demanded the chairman "call the next witness." At that point the gallery erupted in applause.

These proceedings have been recorded in the Documentary Film '' Point Of Order! .'' The title is taken from a phrase that was repeated often during the hearings.

Welch was a Partner at Hale And Dorr , a Boston law firm.


ACTING

Welch played a criminal court judge in northern Michigan in Otto Preminger 's Anatomy Of A Murder (1959).


EXTERNAL LINKS