Felix Frankfurter

(b. Vienna, 15 Nov. 1882; emigrated to U.S. 1894; d. Washington, D.C., 21 Feb. 1965; interred Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Mass.), associate justice, 1939–1962. Small in stature, wiry in youth, of boundless enthusiasm for liberal causes and indefatigable political energy before and, after his appointment to the Supreme Court, Felix Frankfurter was the most controversial justice of his time. Though he denied having any party affiliation, and served under both Democratic and Republican administrations, his politics were openly progressive. Justice Louis Brandeis, whom Professor Frankfurter aided with research and other services, called Frankfurter the most useful lawyer in America. Despite, or perhaps because of this accolade, Professor Frankfurter was feared by conservatives and corporate spokesmen as a dangerous radical. Seated on the Court, Frankfurter acted with restraint, mixing deference to popularly elected executive and legislative branches of government and reasoned, precise elucidations of the rights of minorities, causing some scholars to accuse Frankfurter of changing his stance on many issues. Frankfurter himself lamented that a judge could not write his personal preferences into the law, though Frankfurter decried some of his brethren for just such license (See Judicial Activism.) Accused by Senator Patrick McCarran of being a friend of known communists, Frankfurter was in war and peace a patriot.

The essence of this most complex man was a sense of intellectual commitment. Frankfurter was first and foremost a teacher in the rabbinic style. He welcomed complexities, balanced truths, entertained questions, and understood puzzles. He brought to law a sense of history, comparison, and respect for law's sister disciplines. In front of his classes at Harvard Law School, in his chambers at Court, he demanded reasoned discourse. The job of the teacher was to speak, not to be silent; hence his many thoughtful and fulsome concurrences and dissents and his lectures to the conference that his brethren sometimes resented. The Supreme Court itself he conceptualized as a tutor to the lower courts and Congress. Opinions were part of a continuing dialogue within the hierarchy of courts. Like a good teacher, the Court had to choose among cases, seeking those that best made its points, hearing only those cases that were ripe for decisions and whose parties had suffered real injuries that the courts could remedy.

Frankfurter's vision of his role on the court thus was the culmination of a vision of himself. He always believed that he rose in the world from an immigrant lad of twelve who spoke no English to Supreme Court justice through intellectual achievement, and his opinion had much factual support. His intellectual curiosity, precociousness, and diligence marked his stay at the City College of New York and at Harvard Law School, where he graduated first in his class. He was a brilliant scholar, speaker, and negotiator in the public service. Whether ferreting out corporate wrongdoers as assistant to the federal attorney for the Southern District of New York, or as Woodrow Wilson's labor troubleshooter in the dangerous years of 1916–1918, Frankfurter demonstrated that intellect could solve practical problems and make the world a fairer place. A professor from 1913 until 1939, he loved Harvard Law School as the most egalitarian place on earth—an aristocracy of talent and intellect. During his quarter century of service on its faculty he became the friend and tutor of two generations of government servants, in class, on the walkways around Langdell Hall, and in his own home inculcating in students a love of the law and of service to government. No person was a better mentor, friend, or ally, but every friendship, no matter how high or how low the status of the recipient, was cemented with ideas. His law clerks, many of whom went on to distinguished government and academic careers, remembered with fondness and awe the justice's appetite for intellectual discourse, new ideas, for sheer pleasure as well as use.

In his memoirs he admitted as well his skill in courting people whose views he supported. These contacts, assiduously cultivated and loyally maintained, were not sinister or cynical. Instead, he genuinely sought mentors and in his turn nurtured and placed many younger lawyers and law scholars. Indeed, it can be argued that he was the model of the modern mentor. Early in his career he developed an affection for Henry L. Stimson, whose disinterested public spiritedness, personal courage, and work habits Frankfurter admired. Frankfurter also attached himself to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose intellectual appetites were as voracious as the younger man's, and to Justice Louis Brandeis, whose social conscience needed a strong right arm unencumbered by the restraints that a justice of the Supreme Court felt. Brandeis helped defray medical expenses in the Frankfurter household and Frankfurter carried on research and political advocacy for the justice throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Frankfurter also courted Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a courtship that made the professor one of the president's most trusted and most avid advisers. Frankfurter, who introduced the course in administrative law in American law schools, used his connection to Roosevelt to place many of his former students, so‐called hot dogs, in the New Deal. Frankfurter himself continued to advise Roosevelt. Indeed, even after his appointment to the Court, Frankfurter was a constant visitor to the White House.

Frankfurter's zeal as a teacher on and off the Court rested on his personal faith that policy must be based on reasoned balancing of interests by political leaders. His opinions in First and Fourteenth Amendment cases rested on precise calculations of balancing. Frankfurter conceived claims in terms of group interests—here he betrayed the influence of the early work of Roscoe Pound, work that attracted him to the faculty at Harvard Law School—rather than individual rights. He was never a formalist, a literal reader of the Constitution or of statutes, much less of judicial precedents. He balanced the many sources of law just as he balanced the claims of interest groups and of agencies of government. Frankfurter added to the balance conditions external to the Court. For example, he joined in Korematsu v. United States (1944) and maintained his commitment to the flag salute requirement in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943) because the United States was engaged in a war with a horrific foe, and the claims of government, based upon any reasonable construction, must trump individual rights, unless those rights were essential to the broader historical framework of republican constitutionalism.

More than some abstract and rigid set of “ordered liberties” Frankfurter insisted that the Constitution rested upon an historical evolution of basic notions. Its terms resonated with multiple overlapping meanings that the judge must discern and apply in each case. He was unwilling, thus, to follow Justice Hugo Black's theory of the wholesale incorporation of the Bill of Rights in the Fourteenth Amendment. Not only did Black's formulation violate Frankfurter's understanding of the historical origins of the amendments to the Constitution, Frankfurter suspected that Black's theory was a screen for blatantly political aims.

Not that Frankfurter was apolitical once he reached the Court; quite the opposite was true. Frankfurter believed that the political process was a vital part of the evolution of law but that the Court should defer to the politics of elected assemblies. He did his own politicking in person, through intermediaries, and through the mails. Frankfurter also believed that the High Court must educate public opinion on constitutional issues. Although his opinions often deferred to the prior decisions of elected state judges and legislatures and the Congress, he always explained why deference should be paid. He never hid or dismissed the policy considerations behind such deference. To this extent he was one of the “progressive pragmatists” who transformed law teaching in the 1910s and 1920s from the inculcation of a set of formulae to the open‐ended study of public values. His own commitment to deference was an early part of his jurisprudence, perhaps the influence of the theories of Holmes and Brandeis.

Frankfurter's strong attachment to coordinate federalism, expressed in his dissents in Mapp v. Ohio (1961) and Baker v. Carr (1962), was of a piece with his deference to popularly elected assemblies. An aroused citizenry could do what no court might venture, and the court must not squander its always limited and precious reserve of political influence by entering into political questions (See Judicial Self‐Restraint).

On the bench, Frankfurter was a formidable adversary and a fulsome ally. He was ever trying to build majorities around his positions, an echo of his political organizing efforts over the preceding two decades. Initially close to younger progressive justices like Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy, and Wiley Rutledge, Frankfurter found himself increasingly estranged from the liberal wing of the court. In part the estrangement was owing to Frankfurter's progovernment stance in the flag salute cases, a stance that he maintained throughout his tenure. When the integrity of the courts or the bar was threatened by government, Frankfurter joined his liberal brethren. This philosophy came to have a shape distinct from deference in the work of Frankfurter protégés and students at Harvard Law School. “Process jurisprudence,” filled out in the writings of Henry Hart and Albert Sacks at Harvard Law School, was Frankfurter's inspiration. Its central principle was a rational, balanced, system‐conserving restraint. The courts could not save the world, but neither would they stand by when government threatened the process of adjudication itself. The doctrines of mootness, ripeness, standing, and a “second look” in constitutional questions—reasons for avoiding reaching constitutional questions—that Brandeis pioneered and Frankfurter popularized fit perfectly into this jurisprudence.

On the Court, no one had more concern for legal craftsmanship than Frankfurter. He never forgot his origins, how far he had come, and thus never lost his respect for his office. This, perhaps more than anything else, explains why Frankfurter privately criticized the opinion of Douglas, whom Frankfurter believed to be brilliant but lazy, and Black, whose commitment to abstract first principles and correct political outcomes Frankfurter lamented. Frankfurter's strongest allies on the court were craftsmen like Robert H. Jackson and John M. Harlan. In his last years Frankfurter reconciled with Black. In their opinions on the bench and in their personal lives both men rediscovered their initial affinities.

Both men believed, for example, that desegregation was constitutional, and must come. (See Brown v. Board of Education.) Both men feared the practical consequences of an immediate desegregation order. Both men worked behind the scenes to fashion rules that would allow localities to move toward desegregation in a lawful manner. They joined, thus, in rejecting legal segregation of housing, political primaries, and schools and other public facilities.

Before he died, Frankfurter asked that a Jewish prayer be recited at his death. This was the Kaddish, not mentioning death but extolling the glory and the justness of God. Frankfurter remarked, in explanation, that he was born a Jew and wished to die a Jew. Though not conventionally religious in adulthood, he came from an Orthodox Jewish family—indeed his father had trained as a rabbi in Vienna—and Frankfurter spoke Yiddish and Hebrew before he spoke English. Throughout his career, he was a Zionist and a supporter of secular Jewish causes.

The rabbinical scholarship of the Talmud speaks of obligations, not of rights. The Jew is commanded to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. The way to understand these and the many other mitzvot (God's laws) is study—study of law. Frankfurter's belief in duty, the duty of one individual to another, of the government to individuals, of individuals to government, is all of a piece with Jewish law. Process jurisprudence is a philosophy of obligations.

Frankfurter's most controversial opinions, in Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940), for example, upholding the suspension from public school of Jehovah's Witnesses for their unwillingness to salute the flag, an action they claimed violated their right to free exercise of religion, and his dissent in Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township (1947), in which the majority of the Court upheld a state law permitting state funds to underwrite religious education, fit the ideal of a law of obligation. No one was entitled to special treatment, special exemptions, or special subsidies under the law. Frankfurter's opinions on labor union practices in strikes and controversial concurrence in Cooper v. Aaron (1958) restated this theme: the obligations of law precede and create rights.

If one concedes that this rabbinic fidelity to law lay deep in Frankfurter's consciousness, his life and career no longer appear marked by contradiction. He labored in fidelity to the great principle of obligation. He owed public service and patriotic devotion to the land that had adopted him, the school that entrusted him to teach, and to his fellow citizens who allowed him to hold high office. Throughout his life, he honored the obligation to teach, to study, and to live by law, and he exalted this principle on the eve of his passing. He died three years after suffering a debilitating stroke, leaving his widow, the former Marion A. Denman.

Bibliography

• Leonard Baker, Brandeis and Frankfurter, A Dual Biography (1984).
• Bruce Allen Murphy, The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection (1982).
• Michael E. Parrish, Felix Frankfurter and His Times: The Reform Years (1982).
• James F. Simon, The Antagonists: Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, and Civil Liberties in Modern America (1989).
• Mark Silverman, Constitutional Faiths: Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black, and the Process of Judicial Decision Making (1984)

— Peter Charles Hoffer

Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965), an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, demonstrated a strong sense for civil liberties.

Felix Frankfurter was born in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 15, 1882. At the age of 12 he and his six brothers and sisters were taken to the United States. Life on the East Side of New York City served as the background for Frank-furter's social interests.

Following graduation from the College of the City of New York in 1902, Frankfurter entered Harvard Law School. He became editor of the Harvard Law Review and earned his degree in 1906 with honors. Henry Stimson, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, appointed Frankfurter an assistant in 1906. When President William Howard Taft named Stimson secretary of war in 1911, Stimson took Frankfurter along as law officer of the Bureau of Insular Affairs.

Frankfurter returned to Harvard Law School as a professor in 1914. Eventually he was named the first Byrne professor of administrative law. His Harvard years were broken by government service during World War I. As a special assistant to the secretary of war, and later in the same capacity to the secretary of labor, he helped formulate policy. Again at Harvard, Frankfurter became involved in numerous cases of national prominence: the Scopes trial (1925), the silk strike in New Jersey, and the attempt to suppress the American Mercury in Boston. He fought for the release of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in 1927 and helped found the American Civil Liberties Union. During Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency Frankfurter worked on the Security Exchange Act of 1934 and helped formulate the Utility Holding Company Act.

Frankfurter was made a Supreme Court justice in 1939. From the beginning his opinions were challenged as extremely liberal. However, he took a resolute position on the Constitution and its place in American society. He understood that this document could survive only so long as the Court guarded its prerogatives.

Decisions in the civil rights area found Frankfurter strongly for the individual. His opinion on the movie The Miracle was typical. When the highest court in New York State ruled the film sacrilegious, Frankfurter saw this as an invasion of private rights. He was also strongly opposed to congressional committees and their investigating procedures.

Frankfurter had married Marion A. Denman after World War I. The marriage produced no children, and during World War II the Frankfurters adopted three English refugee children.

Further Reading

An excellent biography is Helen S. Thomas, Felix Frankfurter, Scholar on the Bench (1960). See also Wallace Mendelson, ed., Felix Frankfurter: A Tribute (1964), and Liva Baker, Felix Frankfurter (1969). Special studies are Patricia A. Edgeworth, Mr. Justice Frankfurter and the Administration of Criminal Justice (1955), which describes an area of law not usually associated with Frankfurter and offers a new view of him, and Clyde Edward Jacobs, Justice Frankfurter and Civil Liberties (1961).

(click to enlarge)
Felix Frankfurter. (credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born Nov. 15, 1882, Vienna, Austria-Hungary — died Feb. 22, 1965, Washington, D.C., U.S.) Austrian-born U.S. jurist and public official. Immigrating to the U.S. at the age of 12, he was educated at the City College of New York and Harvard Law School, where he later taught (1914 – 39). He served as secretary of war (1911 – 13) under Pres. William H. Taft. He advised Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference (1919) and counseled Franklin Roosevelt on New Deal legislation (1933 – 39). He promoted Zionism in the U.S. and helped found the American Civil Liberties Union; his friend Louis Brandeis secretly encouraged his attacks on the Sacco-Vanzetti conviction. In 1939 he was appointed by Roosevelt to the Supreme Court of the United States, on which he served until 1962. He became a leading exponent of judicial restraint, holding that judges should adhere closely to precedent and largely disregard their personal views; his opinions evince a concern with the integrity of government, sometimes at the expense of individual liberties.

For more information on Felix Frankfurter, visit Britannica.com.

• Born: Nov. 15, 1882, Vienna, Austria
• Education: City College of New York, B.A., 1902; Harvard Law School, LL.B., 1906
• Previous government service: assistant U.S. attorney, Southern District of New York, 1906–9; law officer, Bureau of Insular Affairs, War Department, 1910–14; assistant to the secretary of war, secretary and counsel, President's Mediation Commission, assistant to the U.S. secretary of labor, 1917–18; chairman, War Labor Policies Board, 1918
• Appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt Jan. 5, 1939; replaced Benjamin Cardozo, who died
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Jan. 17, 1939, by a voice vote; retired Aug. 28, 1962
• Died: Feb. 21, 1965, Washington, D.C.

Felix Frankfurter was the only naturalized citizen of the United States to serve on the Supreme Court. He was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria, and came to New York City in 1894, at the age of 12. He was unable to speak English upon his arrival, but he learned the language quickly and thoroughly. He graduated with honors from the City College of New York and Harvard Law School.

Frankfurter served as the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York (1906–9), as a federal government official from 1910 to 1918, and then as a law professor at Harvard until 1939, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him to the Supreme Court. During his 23 years on the Court, Justice Frankfurter was an advocate of judicial restraint, the belief that justices should carefully recognize constitutional limitations and defer to legislative decisions, whenever reasonable, as the legitimate expression of the majority of the people. In line with his views on judicial restraint, Justice Frankfurter strongly opposed “total incorporation” of the Bill of Rights under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, which was promoted by his colleague Justice Hugo Black. He argued, for example, that the framers of the 14th Amendment had not intended state governments to follow exactly the requirements of the federal Bill of Rights in dealing with people accused of violating state laws. In Adamson v. California (1947), he held that the 14th Amendment was “not the basis of a uniform code of criminal procedure federally imposed…. In a federal system it would be a function debilitating to the responsibility of state and local agencies.”

Frankfurter was concerned with maintaining the vigor of state and local governments within the federal system. He deplored the trend toward an overwhelming federal government that tended to diminish the functions of state and local governments. He viewed this as a violation of the fundamental constitutional principle of federalism, which originally involved a substantial role for state governments within the Union.

Frankfurter retired from the Court in 1962 after suffering a stroke that greatly weakened him. He died three years later.

See also Federalism; Incorporation doctrine; Judicial activism and judicial restraint

Sources

• Liva Baker, Felix Frankfurter (New York: Coward-McCann, 1969).
• Max Freedman, Roosevelt and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967).
• Harry N. Hirsch, The Enigma of Felix Frankfurter (New York: Basic Books, 1981).
• Philip B. Kurland, Mr. Justice Frankfurter and the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971).
• Michael E. Parrish, Felix Frankfurter and His Times (New York: Macmillan, 1982).
• James F. Simon, “The Antagonists: Hugo Black and Felix Frankfurter”, Constitution 3, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 263–4

(1882-1965), legal educator and associate justice, U.S. Supreme Court. Frankfurter, the only naturalized American to serve on the Supreme Court, arrived in New York in 1894 from Vienna, Austria. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1906 after compiling an exceptional record. Because he was Jewish, he received no offers from private law firms commensurate with his talents, so he accepted an offer to assist the young Henry L. Stimson, who had just become the U.S. attorney in New York. Stimson took Frankfurter to Washington with him in 1911 when he became secretary of war in the administration of William Howard Taft. Frankfurter remained in Washington until 1914, when he joined the faculty of Harvard Law School. He performed important government service during World War I and participated in the Versailles Conference afterward.

Throughout the 1920s, Frankfurter was influential both as a law professor and as an active participant in public debates of the day, most notably in the controversy surrounding the conviction and subsequent execution of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in Massachusetts. By 1933 Frankfurter had become a trusted adviser and confidant to the new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, although he rejected an invitation to become solicitor general of the United States. Frankfurter preferred to remain at Harvard, where he could identify bright young lawyers and encourage them to join New Deal agencies in Washington.

One of Frankfurter's mentors was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who argued that courts should, with rare exceptions, defer to the decisions made by legislatures and the Congress. Frankfurter agreed. He was especially critical of the Court for striking down much New Deal legislation in 1935-1936.

Roosevelt named Frankfurter to the Supreme Court in 1939, to succeed Justice Benjamin Cardozo. Although some anti-Semitic opposition was voiced, his appointment was generally well received, especially by liberals who looked forward to Frankfurter's becoming the intellectual leader of a "Roosevelt Court."

Frankfurter and other Roosevelt-appointed justices agreed that the new regulatory state being established by the New Deal (and in many states by their legislatures) was constitutional. But they disagreed sharply over whether the Court should similarly acquiesce to the victimization of unpopular political minorities by majoritarian legislatures. Frankfurter wrote a controversial opinion in Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940), upholding Pennsylvania's right to punish Jehovah's Witness schoolchildren whose religious beliefs prevented their pledging allegiance to the American flag. (The Court reversed itself in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette [1943], over his sharp dissent.) Thereafter, Frankfurter, though a major figure on the Court, was regularly challenged by Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and others who thought the Court should play a more active role in protecting minorities and otherwise monitoring the fairness of the political process. Indeed, Frankfurter's last important opinion was a dissent in Baker v. Carr (1962), objecting to the Court's willingness to assess the fairness of legislative districting.

Bibliography:

Liva Baker, Felix Frankfurter (1969); Michael Parrish, Felix Frankfurter and His Times: The Reform Years (1982).

Author:

Sanford Levinson

See also Baker v. Carr ; Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr.; New Deal; Sacco-Vanzetti Case; Supreme Court.

A judge of the twentieth century, he served on the Supreme Court from 1939 to 1962. Frankfurter believed in judicial restraint, the idea that judges should decide cases and not try to shape public policy (or “legislate”) from the bench.

Felix Frankfurter served as a government attorney in the early nineteenth century and then taught law at Harvard Law School. In the 1920s and 1930s, he supported a number of liberal causes, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. In 1939, he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court as an associate justice. Throughout his twenty-three years on the Court, he was known for consistently applying the theory of judicial self-restraint.

Frankfurter was born November 15, 1882, in Vienna. At the age of twelve, he emigrated from Vienna to the United States with his parents and four siblings. The Frankfurters, like many other Jews in Vienna, had lived in Leopoldstadt, the center of the Jewish Ghetto, where they faced an undercurrent of hostility and a future of economic uncertainty. Along with 18 million other Europeans who immigrated to the United States between 1890 and 1920, the family sought a fresh start.

Upon his arrival in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1894, Frankfurter could not speak a word of English. Yet, twelve years later, after earning his undergraduate degree from City College, in New York, Frankfurter graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School. Following a short stint with a private law firm on Wall Street, where he represented corporate interests, Frankfurter was appointed to serve for the next four years as assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, prosecuting white-collar criminals. In 1911, he was named solicitor to the federal Bureau of Insular Affairs.

Frankfurter enjoyed working as an attorney for the government much more than representing corporations in private practice. He stressed that "the American lawyer should regard himself as a potential officer of his government and a defender of its laws and Constitution." He predicted that "if the time should ever come when this tradition ha[s] faded out and the members of the bar … become merely the servants of business, the future of our liberties would be gloomy indeed."

In 1914, Frankfurter returned to his alma mater Harvard Law School, as professor of law. Frankfurter's tenure as professor was marked by his intellectual honesty and rigor. Teaching only students of high academic standing, he tirelessly explored the law's complexities and reveled in its nuances, helping his classes see both the gray areas and the bright lines. He also took a personal interest in his students, helping many of them obtain a clerkship with one of the United States' leading judges, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Louis D. Brandeis, and Learned Hand.

Brandeis, a Supreme Court justice from 1916 to 1939, was one of Frankfurter's closest friends. The two met after a lecture Brandeis gave before the Harvard Ethical Society during Frankfurter's days as a law student. Brandeis, who never had a son of his own, acted as a father and mentor to Frankfurter, who was twenty-six years his junior. During the 1930s, acting as an informal adviser to President Roosevelt, Frankfurter cajoled the president into supporting liberal causes espoused by Brandeis.

Although Frankfurter claimed that he was not a member of any political party, he supported many liberal causes. In 1920, he became a charter member of the newly founded American Civil Liberties Union, an organization created to protect the constitutional rights of members of ethnic, religious, and racial minorities. During the 1930s, Frankfurter served as an adviser to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Frankfurter also helped develop many aspects of President Roosevelt's New Deal programs. For example, he brought together the legislative engineers who drafted the Securities Act of 1933 (15 U.S.C.A. §77a to 77z, 77aa), which today remains a prominent piece of federal law regulating the trading of stocks and bonds.

Frankfurter's contribution to the case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti identified him as an activist for liberal causes in the mind of many U.S. citizens. Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants who spoke only broken English, were indicted for killing a guard and a paymaster from a shoe company in Massachusetts in 1920. The physical evidence presented against Sacco and Vanzetti was tenuous. For the jurors who heard the case, the most incriminating information may have been the defendants' radical political beliefs: both were known anarchists who opposed the military draft. Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted and executed for the two murders.

Writing an article for the Atlantic Monthly, a venerable national publication with a wide readership, Frankfurter accused the prosecuting attorney and trial judge of appealing to the jurors' prejudice against the defendants' political activities and immigrant status. Frankfurter also accused the prosecutor of conspiring with the government's ballistics expert to mislead the jury. Finally, Frankfurter suggested that the court-appointed interpreter nefariously misrepresented the defendants' testimony in order to enhance the prosecution's case. Frankfurter supported each accusation with passages from the trial record. His article was later published as a book titled The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti (1927). The article and the book have served as a starting point for subsequent generations examining the role that passion, prejudice, and politics played in the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, as well as in the trials of members of other unpopular minorities in the United States.

In light of Frankfurter's unyielding support for civil rights and individual liberties, as a lawyer and professor of law, many liberals rejoiced when President Roosevelt appointed him to serve as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1939. However, by the time Frankfurter retired twenty-three years later, many of these same liberals were disappointed by his failure to embrace every religious and political minority that presented a claim before the Supreme Court. In retrospect, Frankfurter's actions as a Supreme Court justice cannot adequately be characterized as liberal or conservative but are most accurately described as exhibiting a consistent pattern of judicial self-restraint.

Judicial self-restraint is a theory by which a judge decides cases according to the express legal rules contained in constitutional and statutory provisions as well as common-law precedent, independent of the judge's own personal predilections. According to this theory, state and federal legislatures are the only legitimate government bodies empowered to make laws under the U.S. Constitution, which separates the powers delegated to each branch of government.

The role of the judiciary in this system of checks and balances is simply to interpret and apply the laws passed by legislatures, and decide cases based on politically neutral principles regardless of how insensitive the outcome may seem. Advocates of judicial self-restraint believe that judges, many of whom are appointed to the bench for life and are therefore not accountable to the electorate, upset the democratic authority of the people when they overturn laws passed by elected officials in order to achieve politically palatable results.

Many observers point to the two Flag Salute cases—Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 60 S. Ct. 1010, 84 L. Ed. 1375 (1940), and West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 63 S. Ct. 1178, 87 L. Ed. 1628 (1943)—as evidence that Frankfurter was a steadfast adherent to the philosophy of judicial self-restraint. Separated by only three years, the two cases presented the same issue: whether the government could compel schoolchildren who were Jehovah's Witnesses to salute the U.S. flag in violation of their religious beliefs, which prohibited them from engaging in any form of idolatry other than worshipping the Almighty. In both cases, Frankfurter resolved the issue in favor of the government. In the first case, only one justice dissented from Frankfurter's majority opinion, which upheld the expulsion of students who had refused to salute the flag. In the second case, Frankfurter was one of three justices dissenting from the Supreme Court's invalidation of a state law requiring all schoolchildren to salute the flag.

Writing for the majority in Gobitis, Frankfurter recognized the First Amendment right of members of religious minorities to exercise their religious beliefs free from government intimidation or coercion. But "the mere possession of religious convictions," Frankfurter cautioned, "does not relieve the citizen from discharge of political responsibilities." He reasoned, "National unity is the basis of national security," and exempting some schoolchildren from their duty to salute the flag "might introduce elements of difficulty into the school discipline … [and] cast doubts into the minds of other children." Because he saw no indication that the Framers of the First Amendment explicitly intended to protect the Jehovah's Witness children in these circumstances, Frankfurter concluded that the legislature, not the judiciary, must be permitted to select the "appropriate means" to establish "the binding tie of cohesive sentiment" that forms the "ultimate foundation of a free society."

In Barnette, the Supreme Court overruled Gobitis and held that the First Amendment prohibits the government from compelling schoolchildren to salute the U.S. flag when such activity violates their religious beliefs. Many observers attribute the shift in the Court's opinion to a decrease in the perceived need for patriotic obeisance: the outcome of World War II, which was in doubt when Gobitis was decided in 1940, was clearer when Barnette was decided in 1943, as the Allied powers moved closer to victory.

Yet Frankfurter, who had been excoriated in the newspapers and by his former colleagues in academia for his decision in Gobitis, remained unwavering in his commitment to judicial self-restraint. In a vituperative dissenting opinion to Barnette, Frankfurter wrote,

One who belongs to the most vilified and persecuted minority in history is not likely to be insensible to the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution. Were my purely personal attitude relevant I should whole-heartedly associate myself with the general libertarian views in the Court's opinion, representing as they do the thought and action of a lifetime. But as judges we are neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic. We owe equal attachment to the Constitution and are equally bound by our judicial obligations whether we derive our citizenship from the earliest or the latest immigrants to these shores. As a member of this Court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard…. In the light of all the circumstances, including the history of this question in this Court, it would require more daring than I possess to deny that reasonable legislators could have taken the action which is before us for review.

Frankfurter was again assailed for his failure to protect political minorities, in Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 65 S. Ct. 193, 89 L. Ed. 194 (1944), where he concurred with the Court's majority opinion permitting the U.S. government to confine over one hundred thousand U.S. citizens of Japanese descent to "relocation centers" (essentially concentration camps) across the United States during World War II. These relocation centers were authorized pursuant to joint presidential and congressional action initiated as part of an effort to tighten internal security in the United States following the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Court's determination that these centers represented a "reasonably expedient" exercise of the government's power "to wage war successfully," Frankfurter wrote, "d[id] not carry with it [the justices] approval of that which Congress and the Executive did" because "[t]hat is their business, not ours."

Frankfurter retired from the Supreme Court in 1962, and died three years later on February 22, 1965, in Washington, D.C. His legal career spanned over 50 years. Perceived as an advocate of liberal causes at the beginning of his career, Frankfurter is now remembered as much for his conservative judicial style. Regardless of political labels, Frankfurter remains one of the most respected Supreme Court justices in U.S. history.

Quotes:

"To some lawyers, all facts are created equal."

"Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep."

"Judicial judgment must take deep account of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today."

"We forget that the most successful statesmen have been professionals. Lincoln was a professional politician."

"There can be no security where there is fear."

"Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man."

See more famous quotes by Felix Frankfurter

Felix Frankfurter
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
In office January 30, 1939 – August 28, 1962
Nominated by	Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Preceded by	Benjamin N. Cardozo
Succeeded by	Arthur Goldberg
Born	November 15, 1882(1882-11-15) Vienna, Austria
Died	February 22, 1965 (aged 82) Washington, D.C.

Felix Frankfurter (November 15, 1882 – February 22, 1965) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Early career 3 First World War 4 Postwar 5 New Deal years 6 Supreme Court 7 Personal Relations on the Court 8 Bibliography 9 Retirement, death and legacy 10 Notes 11 References 12 See also 13 External links

Early life

Frankfurter was born on November 15, 1882 in Vienna, Austria, third of six children of Leopold and Emma (Winter) Frankfurter.^[1] His forebears had been rabbis for generations.^[2] In 1894, when he was twelve, his family emigrated to the United States, where he learned English growing up on New York City's Lower East Side. Frankfurter attended P.S. 25 where he excelled at his studies and enjoyed chess and crap shooting on the street. He spent many hours reading at The Cooper Union as well as attending political lectures, usually on subjects such as trade unionism, socialism and communism.^[3][4] After graduating from City College of New York, (Phi Beta Kappa)^[5] in 1902, he worked for the Tenement House Department of New York City in order to raise money for law school. He applied successfully to Harvard Law School, where he excelled academically and socially. He made lifelong friends of Walter Lippmann and Horace Kallen, became an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and graduated with one of the best academic records since Louis Brandeis.^[3][6]

Early career

Due to the anti-semitism of the time, Frankfurter initially found it difficult to find employment after graduation. He joined the New York law firm of Hornblower, Bryne, Miller and Porter in 1906, and then in the same year became the assistant of Henry Stimson, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York.^[7] During this period, Frankfurter read Herbert Croly's book The Promise of American Life, and became a supporter of New Nationalism and Theodore Roosevelt. In 1911, President William Howard Taft appointed Stimson as his Secretary of War and Stimson appointed Frankfurter as law officer of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, though Frankfurter in fact worked as Stimson's assistant and confidant. His government position restricted his ability to publicly voice his progressive views, though he expressed his opinions clearly in private to friends such as Judge Learned Hand.^[8] In 1912 Frankfurter supported the Bull Moose campaign to return Roosevelt to the presidency and was bitterly disappointed when Woodrow Wilson was elected. He became increasingly disillusioned with the established parties, and described himself as "politically homeless".^[9]

First World War

Frankfurter's work in Washington had impressed the faculty at Harvard Law School, and a donation from the financier Jacob Schiff created a position for him there. He taught mainly administrative law and occasionally criminal law.^[10] With fellow professor James M. Landis he advocated for judicial restraint in dealing with government misdeeds, including greater freedom for administrative agencies from judicial oversight.^[11] He also served as counsel for the National Consumers League arguing for progressive causes such as minimum wage and restricted work hours.^[2][10] He was involved in the early years of The New Republic when it was founded by Herbert Croly.^[2][12]

When the United States entered World War I in 1917 Frankfurter took a special leave from Harvard to serve as special assistant to the Secretary of War Newton D. Baker.^[13] He was appointed Judge Advocate General, supervising military courts-martial for the War Department.^[14] In September 1917, he was appointed counsel to a commission established by President Wilson to resolve major strikes threatening war production, the President's Mediation Committee. Among the disturbances he investigated were the 1916 Preparedness Day Bombing in San Francisco, where he argued strongly that the radical leader Thomas Mooney had been framed and required a new trial.^[15] He also examined the copper industry in Arizona, where industry bosses solved industrial relations problems by having more than 1,000 strikers forcibly deported to New Mexico.^[16] Overall, Frankfurter's work gave him an opportunity to learn firsthand about labor politics and extremism, including anarchism, communism and revolutionary socialism. He came to sympathize with labor issues, arguing that "unsatisfactory, remediable social conditions, if unattended, give rise to radical movements far transcending the original impulse." His activities led the public to view him as a radical lawyer and supporter of radical principles,^[15] and he was accused by former President Theodore Roosevelt of being "engaged in excusing men precisely like the Bolsheviki in Russia."^[17]

Postwar

As the war drew to a close, Frankfurter was among the nearly one hundred intellectuals who signed a statement of principles for the formation of the League of Free Nations Associations, which aimed to increase American participation in international affairs.^[18]

Frankfurter was encouraged by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis to become more involved in Zionism.^[2] With Brandeis he lobbied President Wilson to support the Balfour Declaration, a British government statement supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.^[2] In 1918, he participated in the founding conference of the American Jewish Congress in Philadelphia creating a national democratic organization of Jewish leaders from all over the US.^[19] In 1919, Frankfurter served as a Zionist delegate to the Paris Peace Conference.^[2]

In 1919, Frankfurter married Marion Denman, the daughter of a Congregational minister and a Smith College graduate. They married after a long and difficult courtship, and against the wishes of his mother, who was disturbed by the prospect of her son marrying outside the Jewish faith.^[17][20] Frankfurter himself was a non-practicing Jew, and regarded religion as "an accident of birth". Frankfurter was a dominating husband and Denman suffered from frail health, which resulted in frequent mental breakdowns.^[17] The couple had no children.

Frankfurter's activities continued to attract attention for their alleged radicalism. In November 1919, he chaired a meeting in support of American recognition of the newly created Soviet Union.^[21] In 1920, Frankfurter helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union.^[2] Following the arrest of suspected communist radicals in 1919 and 1920 during the Palmer raids, Frankfurter, together with other prominent lawyers including Zechariah Chafee, signed an ACLU report which condemned the "utterly illegal acts committed by those charged with the highest duty of enforcing the laws" including entrapment, police brutality, prolonged incommunicado detention, and violations of due process in court. Frankfurter and Chafee also submitted briefs to a habeas corpus application to the Massachusetts Federal District Court. Judge George Anderson ordered the discharge of twenty aliens, and his denunciation of the raids effectively ended them.^[22][23][24]

In 1921, Frankfurter was given a chair at Harvard Law School, and continued progressive work on behalf of socialists and oppressed and religious minorities. When A. Lawrence Lowell, the President of Harvard University, proposed to limit the enrollment of Jewish students, Frankfurter worked with others to defeat the plan.^[17][25]

In the late 1920s, he came to public attention when he supported calls for a new trial for Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two anarchists who had been sentenced to death on robbery/murder charges. Frankfurter wrote an influential article for the Atlantic Monthly and subsequently a book The case of Sacco and Vanzetti: A Critical Analysis for Lawyers and Laymen critiquing the prosecution's case and the judge's handling of it and asserting that the convictions were the result of xenophobic prejudice resulting from the communist "Red hysteria."^[2][26] His actions further isolated him from his Harvard colleagues and from Boston society.^[17]

New Deal years

Following the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, Frankfurter quickly became a trusted and loyal adviser to the new President. He was among the most conservative of Roosevelt's advisers, arguing against the grandiose economic plans of Raymond Charles Moley, Adolf Berle and Rexford Guy Tugwell, while clearly recognizing the need for major changes to deal with the inequalities of wealth distribution that had led to the devastating nature of the Depression.^[27] Frankfurter successfully recommended many bright young lawyers toward public service with the New Deal administration, so many indeed that they became known as "Felix's Happy Hot Dogs".^[27][28] He moved to Washington, DC, commuting back to Harvard for classes, but as with previous experiences, was never fully accepted within government circles. He worked closely with Louis Brandeis, lobbying for political activities suggested by Brandeis. He declined a seat on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and, in 1933, the position of Solicitor General of the United States.^[28] Long an anglophile, Frankfurter had studied in Oxford in 1920, and in 1933-4 he returned to act as visiting Eastman professor in the faculty of Law.^[28][29]

Supreme Court

Following the death of Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo in July 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked his old friend Frankfurter for recommendations of prospective candidates for the vacancy. Finding none on the list to suit his criteria, Roosevelt nominated Frankfurter himself, and he was confirmed without dissent.^[30] He served from January 30, 1939 to August 28, 1962. He wrote 247 opinions for the Court, 132 concurring opinions, and 251 dissents.^[31]

Despite his liberal political leanings, Frankfurter became the court's most outspoken advocate of judicial restraint, the view that courts should not interpret the fundamental law, the constitution, in such a way as to impose sharp limits upon the authority of the legislative and executive branches.^[32] He also usually refused to apply the federal Constitution to the states.^[33] In the case of Irvin v. Dowd, Frankfurter would state what was for him a frequent theme: "The federal judiciary has no power to sit in judgment upon a determination of a state court... Something that thus goes to the very structure of our federal system in its distribution of power between the United States and the state is not a mere bit of red tape to be cut, on the assumption that this Court has general discretion to see justice done...".^[34]

In his judicial restraint philosophy, Frankfurter was heavily influenced by his close friend and mentor Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who had taken a firm stand during his tenure on the bench against the doctrine of "economic due process". Frankfurter revered Justice Holmes, often citing Holmes in his opinions. In practice, this meant Frankfurter was generally willing to uphold the actions of those branches against constitutional challenges so long as they did not "shock the conscience." Frankfurter was particularly well known as a scholar of civil procedure.

Frankfurter's adherence to the judicial restraint philosophy was shown in the 1940 opinion he wrote for the court in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, a case involving Jehovah's Witnesses students who had been expelled from school due to their refusal to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. He rejected claims that First Amendment rights should be protected by law, and urged deference to the decisions of the elected school board officials. He stated that religious belief "does not relieve the citizen from the discharge of political responsibilities" and that exempting the children from the flag-saluting ceremony "might cast doubts in the minds of other children" and reduce their loyalty to the nation. Judge Harlan Fiske Stone issued a lone dissent. The court's decision sparked hundreds of violent attacks on Jehovah's witnesses throughout the country,^[35] and was subsequently overturned in March 1943 by the Supreme Court decision on West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette. Former ally, Supreme Court justice Robert H. Jackson wrote the majority opinion in this case, which also concerned Jehovah's Witnesses students expelled from school for refusing to salute the flag. Jackson's opinion, which contradicted Frankfurter's on most points, elicited an impassioned dissent from Frankfurter. In it he rejected the notion that as a Jew he ought "to particularly protect minorities." He reiterated his view that the role of the Court was not to give an opinion of the "wisdom or evil of a law" but only to determine "whether legislators could in reason have enacted such a law".^[36][37]

In the apportionment case of Baker v. Carr, Frankfurter's position was that the federal courts did not have the right to tell sovereign state governments how to apportion their legislatures; he thought the Supreme Court should not get involved in political questions, whether federal or local.^[38] Frankfurter's view had won out in the 1946 case preceding Baker, Colegrove v. Green - there, a 4-3 majority decided that the case was non-justiciable, and the federal courts had no right to become involved in state politics, no matter how unequal district populations had become.^[38][39] However, the Baker case would settle the matter - the drawing of state legislative districts was within the purview of federal judges, despite Frankfurter's warnings that the Court should avoid entering "the political thicket."^[40]

Frankfurter reaffirmed this view in a concurring opinion written for the 1951 Dennis v. United States Supreme Court ruling. The decision affirmed, by a 6-2 margin, the conviction of eleven communist leaders for conspiring to overthrow the US government under the Smith Act. In it, he once again argued that judges "are not legislators, that direct policy-making is not our province." He also recognized that curtailing the free speech of those who advocate the overthrow of government by force, also risked stifling criticism by those who did not, writing that "[it] is a sobering fact that in sustaining the convictions before us we can hardly escape restriction on the interchange of ideas."^[41]

A pivotal school desegregation case came before the court in Brown v. Board of Education. It was argued, and was set for reargument when Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson died. It has been reported that Frankfurter remarked that Vinson's death was the first solid piece of evidence he had seen to prove the existence of God. It should be noted that this story was tied to a scheduled reargument in which Vinson's vote could be crucial (in Brown vs. Board of Education, where ostensibly Vinson was not disposed to overrule Plessy vs. Ferguson), and in any event, some believe the story to be "possibly apocryphal."^[42]

Frankfurter demanded that the opinion in 1955's Brown v. Board of Education II order desegregation with the phrase of "all deliberate speed".^[43] The phrase gave school boards across the country an excuse to defy the demands of the first Brown decision.^[43] For fifteen years, schools in the South remained segregated, until the Supreme Court's opinion in Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education.^[44] There, the Court would write that "The obligation of every school district is to terminate dual school systems at once and to operate now and hereafter only unitary schools."^[45]

Frankfurter was hands-off in the area of business. In the 1956 government case against DuPont, started because DuPont seemed to have maneuvered its way into a preferential relationship with GM, Frankfurter refused to find a conspiracy, and said the Court had no right to interfere with the progress of business.^[46][47] Here again, Frankfurter opposed the views of Justices Warren, Black, Douglas, and Brennan (though Frankfurter lost 4-3).^[48]

Later in his career, Frankfurter's judicial restraint philosophy frequently put him on the dissenting side of ground-breaking decisions taken by the Warren Court to end discrimination.

Frankfurter believed that the authority of the Supreme Court would be reduced if it went too strongly against public opinion: He sometimes went to great lengths to avoid unpopular decisions, including fighting to delay court decisions against racial intermarriage.^[49]

For the October 1948 Supreme Court Term, Frankfurter hired William Thaddeus Coleman as a law clerk, the first African American to serve as a Supreme Court law clerk.^[50]

Personal Relations on the Court

Throughout his career on the court, Frankfurter was a large influence on many justices, such as Clark, Burton, Whittaker, and Minton.^[51] He generally attempted to influence any new justice coming in,^[52] though he managed to repel Justice Brennan - who had voted with Frankfurter half the time in his first year,^[53] but then opposed him after Frankfurter's attempts at inculcation.^[54] Frankfurter turned against Brennan completely after the case of Irvin v. Dowd. Other justices who received the Frankfurter treatment of flattery and instruction were Burton, Vinson, and Harlan.^[55] With Vinson, who became Chief Justice, Frankfurter feigned deference, though he sought influence.^[56]

Justice Frankfurter was in his time the leader of the conservative faction of the Supreme Court; he would for many years feud with liberals like Justices Black and Douglas.^[38] He often complained that they "started with a result" and that their work was "shoddy," "result-oriented," and "demagogic".^[56] Similarly, Frankfurter panned the work of Chief Justice Earl Warren as "dishonest nonsense."^[57]

Frankfurter saw justices with ideas different from his own as part of a more liberal "Axis" - these opponents were chiefly Justices Black and Douglas, but would also include Murphy and Rutledge; the group would for years oppose Frankfurter's judicially-restrained ideology.^[58] Douglas, Murphy, and then Rutledge were the first justices to agree with Hugo Black's notion that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Bill of Rights protection into it; this view would later mostly become law, during the period of the Warren Court.^[59] For his part, Frankfurter would assert that Black's incorporation theory would usurp state control over criminal justice by limiting states' development of new interpretations of criminal due process.^[60]

Frankfurter's argumentative style was not popular among his Supreme Court colleagues. "All Frankfurter does is talk, talk, talk," Justice Earl Warren complained. "He drives you crazy."^[32][61] Hugo Black reported that "I thought Felix was going to hit me today, he got so mad."^[32] In the Court's biweekly conference sessions, traditionally a period for vote-counting, Frankfurter had the habit of lecturing his colleagues for forty-five minutes at a time or more with his book resting on a podium. Frankfurter's ideological opponents would leave the room or read their mail while he lectured.^[62]

Frankfurter was close friends with Justice Robert H. Jackson.^[63] The two exchanged much correspondence over their mutual dislike for Justice William O. Douglas.^[63] Frankfurter also had a strong influence over Jackson's opinions.^[64]

Frankfurter was universally praised for his work before coming to the Supreme Court, and was expected to influence it for decades past the death of FDR.^[65] However, Frankfurter's influence over justices was limited by his failure to adapt to new surroundings, his style of personal relations (relying heavily on the use of flattery and ingratiation, which ultimately proved divisive), and his strict adherence to the ideology of judicial restraint. Michael E. Parrish, professor at UCSD, said of Frankfurter: "History has not been kind to [him]... there is now almost a universal consensus that Frankfurter the justice was a failure, a judge who... became 'uncoupled from the locomotive of history' during the Second World War, and who thereafter left little in the way of an enduring jurisprudential legacy."^[66]

Bibliography

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Author: Felix Frankfurter

Frankfurter published several books including Cases Under the Interstate Commerce Act; The Business of the Supreme Court (1927); Justice Holmes and the Supreme Court (1938); The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti (1927) and Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (1960).

Retirement, death and legacy

Frankfurter retired in 1962 after suffering a stroke and was succeeded by Arthur Goldberg. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963.

Felix Frankfurter died from congestive heart failure at the age of 82. His remains are interred in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.^[67]

There are two extensive collections of Frankfurter's papers: one at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress and the other at Harvard University. Both are fully open for research and have been distributed to other libraries on microfilm. A chapter of the international youth-led fraternal organization for Jewish teenagers Aleph Zadik Aleph in Scottsdale, AZ is named in his honor.

Notes

1. ^ Novelguide.com
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} Slater, Elinor; Slater, Robert (1996). Great Jewish Men. Jonathan David Company, Inc. pp. 112–115. ISBN 9780824603816. http://books.google.ca/books?id=T91sokr_nJYC&pg=PA112&dq=felix+frankfurter&as_brr=3&client=firefox-a&sig=ACfU3U247NQGkvhj7mSly6nCU6xBasj9Gw#PPA113,M1. 
3. ^ ^{a b} Murphy 2003, p. 264
4. ^ Alexander 2001, p. 77
5. ^ Supreme Court Justices Who Are Phi Beta Kappa Members, Phi Beta Kappa website, accessed Oct 4, 2009
6. ^ Alexander 2001, pp. 77–8
7. ^ Murphy 2003, pp. 264–65
8. ^ Gunther 1994, pp. 221–22
9. ^ Alexander 2001, p. 82
10. ^ ^{a b} Alexander 2001, p. 83-4
11. ^ Carrington 1999, p. 132
12. ^ Gunther 1994, p. 244
13. ^ Gunther 1994, p. 253
14. ^ Irons 1999, p. 267
15. ^ ^{a b} Alexander 2001, p. 84-7
16. ^ Gunther 1994, p. 353-4
17. ^ ^{a b c d e} Murphy 2003, p. 265
18. ^ Gunther 1994, p. 261
19. ^ Time Magazine, June 20, 1938
20. ^ Polenberg, Richard (2007). "Introduction". The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti. Penguin Classics. xxi. ISBN 9780143105077. http://books.google.ca/books?id=MeZXA2FVt34C&pg=PR21&dq=Marion+Denman&as_brr=3&client=firefox-a. 
21. ^ Gunther 1994, p. 358
22. ^ Irons 1999, p. 283
23. ^ Stone 2004, p. 225-26
24. ^ Morris, Norval; David J. Rothman (1995). The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 358. ISBN 9780195118148. 
25. ^ Gunther 1994, pp. 362-65
26. ^ Rogers, Alan (2008). Murder and the Death Penalty in Massachusetts. University of Massachusetts Press. pp. 187–94. ISBN 9781558496330. http://books.google.ca/books?id=1sRSYaLh2wIC&pg=PA187&dq=Frankfurter++Sacco+Vanzetti&lr=&as_brr=3&client=firefox-a&sig=ACfU3U1qPl7_9nC75E2l0BZNl7mpYbePVA. 
27. ^ ^{a b} Gunther 1994, p. 437
28. ^ ^{a b c} Murphy 2003, p. 266
29. ^ Berlin, Isaiah (2001). "Felix Frankfurter at Oxford". in Hardy, Henry. Personal Impressions. Princeton University Press. pp. 112–19. ISBN 978-0-691-08858-7. http://books.google.ca/books?id=uwdPuPywwlMC&pg=PA112&dq=felix+frankfurter+Oxford&lr=&as_brr=3&client=firefox-a#PPA112,M1. 
30. ^ Irons 1999, pp. 327-8
31. ^ [1]
32. ^ ^{a b c} Irons 1999, p. 328
33. ^ Eisler 1993, p. 121
34. ^ Eisler 1993, pp. 161-162
35. ^ Irons 1999, pp. 338-341
36. ^ Irons 1999, pp. 344-345
37. ^ White, James Boyd (2006), Living Speech: Resisting the Empire of Force, Princeton University Press, pp. 45–47, ISBN 9780691125800, http://books.google.ca/books?id=uA_EXBnUA1EC&pg=PA45&dq=West+Virginia+Board+of+Education+v.+Barnette++Frankfurter+Jackson&as_brr=3&client=firefox-a&sig=ACfU3U1GPIRUlOL5UB9-T2friwhthxawjA#PPA45,M1 
38. ^ ^{a b c} Eisler 1993, p. 11
39. ^ Carrington 1999, p. 142-43
40. ^ Eisler 1993, p. 12
41. ^ Stone 2004, p. 402-10
42. ^ Michael Lariens on Fred Vinson.
43. ^ ^{a b} Woodward and Armstrong 1979, p. 38
44. ^ Woodward and Armstrong 1979, pp. 37-38
45. ^ Woodward and Armstrong 1979, p. 55
46. ^ Eisler 1993, p. 128
47. ^ The Supreme Court Under Earl Warren, 1953-1969. By Michal R. Belknap, Earl Warren. Page 95. University of South Carolina Press.
48. ^ Eisler 1993, p. 129
49. ^ Dworkin 1996, p. 340
50. ^ Greenhouse, Linda (August 30, 2006). "Supreme Court Memo; Women Suddenly Scarce Among Justices' Clerks". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/30/washington/30scotus.html. Retrieved 2008-11-28. 
51. ^ Eisler 1993, pp. 88, 100, 105
52. ^ Eisler 1993, p. 100
53. ^ Eisler 1993, p. 106
54. ^ Eisler 1993, p. 102
55. ^ Hirsch 1981, p. 188
56. ^ ^{a b} Hirsch 1981, pp. 189-90
57. ^ Hirsch 1981, p. 190
58. ^ Ball 2006, p. 14
59. ^ Ball 2006, pp. 212-213
60. ^ Ball 2006, p. 213
61. ^ Parrish 1996, p. 52
62. ^ Ball, Howard. Hugo L. Black: Cold Steel Warrior. Oxford University Press. 2006. ISBN 0-19-507814-4. Page 140.
63. ^ ^{a b} Hirsch 1981, p. 187
64. ^ Hirsch 1981, pp. 187-88
65. ^ Wrightsman, Lawrence S.; La Mort, Justin R. (Fall 2005). "Why Do Supreme Court Justices Succeed or Fail? Harry Blackmun as an Example". Missouri Law Review 70 (4): 1261–87. http://law.missouri.edu/lawreview/docs/70-4/Wrightsman.pdf. 
66. ^ Ball, Howard. Hugo L. Black: Cold Steel Warrior. Oxford University Press. 2006. ISBN 0-19-507814-4. Page 137.
67. ^ Felix Frankfurter memorial at Find a Grave. See also, Christensen, George A. (1983) Here Lies the Supreme Court: Gravesites of the Justices, Yearbook. Supreme Court Historical Society. Christensen, George A., Here Lies the Supreme Court: Revisited, Journal of Supreme Court History, Volume 33 Issue 1, Pages 17 - 41 (19 Feb 2008), University of Alabama.

References

• Abraham, Henry J., Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court. 3d. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). ISBN 0-19-506557-3.
• Alexander, Michael (2001), Jazz Age Jews, Princeton University Press, ISBN 9780691116532 .
• Ball, Howard (2006), Hugo Black: Cold Steel Warrior, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-507814-4 .
• Cushman, Clare, The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies,1789-1995 (2nd ed.) (Supreme Court Historical Society), (Congressional Quarterly Books, 2001) ISBN 1568021267; ISBN 9781568021263.
• Carrington, Paul (1999), Stewards of Democracy: Law as Public Profession, New York: Basic Books, ISBN 978-0813368320 .
• Dworkin, Ronald (1996), Freedom's Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0198264705 .
• Eisler, Kim Isaac (1993), A Justice for All: William J. Brennan, Jr., and the decisions that transformed America, New York: Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0671767879 .
• Frank, John P. (2006), Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, ed., The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions, Chelsea House Publishers, ISBN 978-0791013779 .
• Frankfurter, Felix, Mr. Justice Cardozo and Public Law, Columbia Law Review 39 (1939): 88–118, Harvard Law Review 52 (1939): 440–470, Yale Law Journal 48 (1939): 458–488.
• Gunther, Gerald (1994), Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge, New York: Knopf, ISBN 978-0394588070 .
• Hirsh, H.N. (1981), The Enigma of Felix Frankfurter, New York: Basic Books, ISBN 978-0465019793 .
• Irons, Peter (1999), A People's History of the Supreme Court, New York: Viking Penguin, ISBN 978-0670870066 .
• Hockett, Jeffry D (1996), New Deal Justice: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Hugo L. Black, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert H. Jackson, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, ISBN 0847682102 .
• Kennedy, David M. (2001), Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, Oxford University Press US, ISBN 9780195038347 .
• Maguire, Peter H. (2000), Law and War: An American Story, Columbia University Press, ISBN 9780231120500 .
• Martin, Fenton S. and Goehlert, Robert U., The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography, (Congressional Quarterly Books, 1990). ISBN 0871875543.
• Parrish, Michael H. (1996), "Felix Frankfurter, the Progressive Tradition and the Warren Court", The Warren Court: In Historical and Political Perspective, University of Virginia Press, ISBN 9780813916651 .
• Murphy, Bruce Allen; Owens, Arthur (2003), Vile, John R., ed., Great American Judges: An Encyclopedia, 1, Santa Barbara: ABC–CLIO, ISBN 978-1576079898 .
• Pritchett, C. Herman, Civil Liberties and the Vinson Court (The University of Chicago Press, 1969) ISBN 9780226684437; ISBN 0226684431.
• Stone, Geoffrey R. (2004), Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime From the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism, New York: Norton, ISBN 978-0393058802 .
• Urofsky, Melvin I., Conflict Among the Brethren: Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas and the Clash of Personalities and Philosophies on the United States Supreme Court, Duke Law Journal (1988): 71-113.
• Urofsky, Melvin I., Division and Discord: The Supreme Court under Stone and Vinson, 1941-1953 (University of South Carolina Press, 1997) ISBN 1570031207.
• Urofsky, Melvin I., The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary (New York: Garland Publishing 1994). 590 pp. ISBN 0815311761; ISBN 978-0815311768.
• White, G. Edward (2007), The American Judicial Tradition: Profiles of Leading American Judges (3rd ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0195139624 .
• Woodward, Bob; Armstrong, Scott (1979), The Brethren: inside the Supreme Court, New York: Simon and Schuster, ISBN 0-671-24110-9 .

See also

Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States List of United States Chief Justices by time in office List of U.S. Supreme Court Justices by time in office

United States Supreme Court cases during the Hughes Court United States Supreme Court cases during the Stone Court United States Supreme Court cases during the Vinson Court United States Supreme Court cases during the Warren Court

External links

• September 27, 2006 Epoch Times Editorial on Harry Wu (quotation referring to Jan Karski and Felix Frankfurter: When Jan Karski disclosed the message of Nazis' slaughtering of the Jews, the U.S. Supreme Court judge Felix Frankfurter's response to a Polish diplomat was, "Mr. Ambassador, I did not say this young man is lying. I said I am unable to believe him. There is a difference.")

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Felix Frankfurter

• Felix Frankfurter's Gravesite at Find a Grave
• Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court media on Felix Frankfurter
• Supreme Court Historical Society, Felix Frankfurther.

Legal offices
Preceded by Benjamin N. Cardozo	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States January 30, 1939–August 28, 1962	Succeeded by Arthur Goldberg

Supreme Court of the United States

The Hughes Court Chief Justice: Charles Evans Hughes (1930–1941) 1939: J.C. McReynolds | P. Butler | H.F. Stone | O.J. Roberts | H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas 1940–1941: J.C. McReynolds | H.F. Stone | O.J. Roberts | H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | F. Murphy Feb-Jul 1941: H.F. Stone | O.J. Roberts | H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | F. Murphy | (vacancy) The Stone Court Chief Justice: Harlan Fiske Stone (1941–1946) 1941–1942: O.J. Roberts | H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | F. Murphy | J.F. Byrnes | R.H. Jackson 1943–1945: O.J. Roberts | H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | F. Murphy | R.H. Jackson | W.B. Rutledge 1945–1946: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | F. Murphy | R.H. Jackson | W.B. Rutledge | H.H. Burton The Vinson Court Chief Justice: Frederick Moore Vinson (1946–1953) 1946–1949: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | F. Murphy | R.H. Jackson | W.B. Rutledge | H.H. Burton 1949–1953: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | R.H. Jackson | H.H. Burton | T.C. Clark | S. Minton The Warren Court Chief Justice: Earl Warren (1953–1969) 1953–1954: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | R.H. Jackson | H.H. Burton | T.C. Clark | S. Minton 1955–1956: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | H.H. Burton | T.C. Clark | S. Minton | J.M. Harlan II 1956–1957: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | H.H. Burton | T.C. Clark | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan 1957–1958: H. Black | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | H.H. Burton | T.C. Clark | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | C.E. Whittaker 1958–1962: H. Black | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | T.C. Clark | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | C.E. Whittaker | P. Stewart

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