The Washington Territory had only one Attorney General: James Bard Metcalfe, a Confederate Civil War veteran and trial lawyer who lived in Seattle. On February 2, 1888, Territorial Governor Eugene Semple appointed Metcalfe to the office. Along with the duties laid out by the legislature, Metcalfe was also charged with preparing the Washington Territory for statehood, including helping to draft the 1889 State Constitution. After Washington achieved statehood, Metcalfe remained in the office until the first elected Attorney General, William C. Jones, was sworn in.
When the Washington Territory became the 42nd state in the Union, the Attorney General’s Office was one of the offices included in Article III of the state constitution, creating the executive branch. Article III, Section 21 says, “The attorney general shall be the legal adviser of the state officers, and shall perform such other duties as may be prescribed by law.” Like the governor and other executive officials, the attorney general became an elected official with a term of four years.
Because the language in the state constitution limited the Attorney General’s powers, the office remained a small executive department for much of its early history. For its first two decades, there was routinely only one full-time attorney in the office, the Attorney General himself. Before Walter Bell held the office from 1909 to 1911, Assistant Attorneys General worked part-time in the AGO and part-time in private practice. Bell made Assistant Attorney General a full-time job and required his small number of assistants to move to Olympia.
Additionally, state agencies and officials regularly employed outside counsel rather than relying on the Attorney General. The most significant effect of this was confusion among state agencies because they relied on different lawyers with different interpretations of the laws, so there was no single interpretation under which all state agencies acted. They often worked at cross purposes, which sometimes prevented cooperation between the agencies.
However, the first attorneys general of Washington State did play important roles in representing the state’s interests. William C. Jones argued four cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, including litigation against the powerful Northern Pacific Railroad. When Jones prevailed in three of those cases, he helped establish the state’s authority to regulate water and land use. Wickliffe Stratton, Washington’s third Attorney General, defended the state’s prerogative to collect taxes. When the legislature created the state Railroad Commission in 1905, John Atkinson represented the commission. He also litigated cases concerning public land grants and public schools. William V. Tanner, Attorney General from 1911 to 1919, argued fifteen cases in front of the Supreme Court, most notably securing the right of the state to collect premiums due under the Washington State Worker’s Compensation Act. And John Dunbar, Attorney General from 1923 to 1933, litigated several cases concerning interstate commerce, public transportation, and public utilities.
The Attorney General’s Office was housed in the Temple of Justice in Olympia from 1913 to 1987.
As the years went by, the legislature established new powers of regulation and taxation for the state, and the role of the Attorney General’s Office grew. Tasked with defending new regulatory commissions, boards, and departments, the AGO increased its staff to keep up with the amount of litigation.
The steady growth of the state government parallels cultural and political developments near the turn of the twentieth century. As Washington’s population grew—doubling four times between 1880 and 1920 from 75,000 to 1.3 million—and as industries developed largely unchecked in the region, rural residents and city dwellers alike often demanded government action to protect Washingtonians. The railroads, which controlled prices for passengers and for haulage of agricultural goods, were a particular target for regulation. Each attorney general from Metcalfe onward had to reckon with the way Washingtonians were affected by the rapidly changing economy and political structure. As the state government created new regulatory and taxation plans, the subsequent litigation was, in large part, handled by the small Attorney General’s Office.
Other cultural factors also drove the AGO’s agenda. At the turn of the twentieth century, common fears of immigrants and radical activists were codified by the Washington legislature, and several attorneys general took active roles in enforcing these laws. For example, in 1902, a Japanese immigrant named Takuji Yamashita was denied admission to the Washington State Bar Association because he wasn’t a white American citizen, and the AGO defended the WSBA. When people of Japanese ancestry were captured and imprisoned during the Second World War, Attorney General Smith Troy testified to Congress and filed briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of internment. In another case, when radical labor unions like the Industrial Workers of the World became active in Washington, pervasive fears of anarchists and communists drove Attorney General L. L. Thompson to pursue stiff sentences against union organizers and activists. These prevailing trends in American history influenced the organization and composition of Washington’s politics.
