Thurman Wesley Arnold (1891-1969) was one of the most prominent Legal Realists at Yale in the 1930s. Arnold was recruited to the Law School faculty in 1930, and remained at the school until 1938, when he was appointed Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice.

During his years on the faculty, Arnold authored numerous law review articles and became one of the most prominent Legal Realists through publication of two best-selling books, written for a lay audience, The Symbols of Government (1935) and The Folklore of Capitalism (1937).

As a pioneering leader of the Antitrust Division, however, Arnold was perhaps the most aggressive trust-buster in the division’s history. He restructured the division to emphasize an anti-monopoly strategy with “consumer welfare” (competitive prices) as the goal, rather than a reduction in the concentration of power per se.

Arnold served in the Antitrust Division until he was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1943. In 1945, he left the bench and founded the Washington, D.C. law firm that still bears his name, Arnold & Porter.