PROCEEDINGS

THE CLERK: All rise. Good afternoon. The United States Tax Court is now convened in Special Session. Judge Nims presiding.

CHIEF JUDGE NIMS: Be seated. Good afternoon, and to all of our invited guests, welcome to the Tax Court. Among our guests I would like particularly to recognize Judge Scott's sister and her husband, Lucy and Dolph Bunkley from Auburn, Alabama, a couple of War Eagles, I presume, and Irene's daughter, Irene Scott Carroll from Los Angeles. Irene, where are you? There she is. Irene's nephew, Arthur F. Crofton from Jacksonville. Glad to have you, sir. Tom Scott, Jr., is in the middle of a trial some place, earning an honest living, of course, but he promises to be here in time for the reception this afternoon.

I would also like to recognize J. Edgar Murdock III, Judge Murdock's grandson. If he's here. He was going to try to make it. I'm not sure that he was able to get here. He also was on a trial some place. In addition, several former law clerks of Judge Scotts's are here from out of town, as are a number of her kinfolk from around this area.

Now, one of the genuine psychic rewards of my office is the occasional oportunity to do something nice for someone I truly admire, and Judge Irene Scott is very definitely one of those people. Only five times in the past has the Tax Court seen fit to bestow its highest honor on a member of the Tax Court family. Today, Judge Scott is to be the sixth recipient of the John Edgar Murdock Award, given for outstanding service to the Court.

IX

Before being appointed to the Tax Court by President Eisenhower in 1960, Irene Scott had already achieved a remarkable career in Government. When one thinks of Irene Scott and sees people running for public office by campaigning against the career civil service, one can only wonder who in the world they are talking about.

After graduating number two in her class from the University of Virginia-at Virginia-sorry about that. (Laughter.)

After graduating from the law school-at the University of Alabama Law School in 1936, Irene was able to obtain a position in the Office of Chief Counsel of the Bureau of Internal Revenue in the following year. When you remember that the nation was at the very depths of the great depression in 1936 and 1937, it is all the more remarkable that Irene, a woman lawyer of all things, and that was a rarity in that era, I can assure you, that she was able to get what was at that time a most prized position, prized because in the Bureau, so-called, a young lawyer was actually paid a salary, not something readily available to recent law school graduates of that era.

Irene worked as a trial lawyer in the Chief Counsel's Office for about 13 years and quickly became recognized as one of the nost resourceful, industrious, and effective lawyers on the staff. Her ever-ready willingness to take on tough and thankless jobs is reflected in her appointment to the Excess Profits Tax Council, a quasi-judicial body, in 1950.

This group had the rather unappreciated task of cleaning up the World War II price-gouging mess, from an era which, at that time, everybody was ready to forget. Excess profits tax cases were factually intensive, enormously timeconsuming, and had to be resolved by applying Internal Revenue Code provisions and regulations which were ambiguously drafted at best.

Irene's competency in dealing with these cases shown through like a beacon, and her talent for dealing effectively with massive, factual material was widely recognized. After that mess was cleaned up, Irene in 1952 returned for another stint in the Chief Counsel's Office, then as chief of the trial section of the Appeals Division.