Background

Felix Frankfurter was born on November 15, 1882 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. He was the third of six children of Leopold Frankfurter and Emma Frankfurter. At the age of twelve, his family moved to the United States.

Education

Felix Frankfurter graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1902. In 1906 he received a Bachelor of Laws degree from the Harvard Law School.

Career

Following a short stint with a private law firm on Wall Street, where Felix Frankfurter represented corporate interests, he was appointed in 1906 to serve for the next four years as assistant of Henry Stimson, the United States 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 (now Office of Insular Affairs).

In 1914, Frankfurter returned to Harvard Law School, as professor of law. His 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. During World War I, Frankfurter was advisor and counsel to several government agencies, and in 1919 served as President Woodrow Wilson’s legal advisor at the peace conference in Versailles.

During the 1930s, Frankfurter served as an adviser to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). President Roosevelt rewarded Frankfurter with an appointment to the United States Supreme Court in 1939 after the passing of Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo. During his tenure, he took a firm stance on protecting the integrity of the Federal Government. He evinced toward federal and state legislative action a hands-off attitude similar to that of his friend Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. His insistence on freedom of expression was partly offset by his disinclination to uphold the civil liberties of political radicals, especially members of the United States Communist Party during the "witch hunt" of the 1950s. Frankfurter retired from the Supreme Court in 1962, and died three years later on February 22, 1965, in Washington, D.C.

Achievements

• Felix Frankfurter was an eminent Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He was known for his twenty three years service in this position and for consistently applying the theory of judicial self-restraint. Frankfurter helped develop many aspects of President Roosevelt's New Deal programs. He brought together the legislative engineers who drafted the Securities Act of 1933, which today remains a prominent piece of federal law regulating the trading of stocks and bonds, and helped formulate the Utility Holding Company Act. Frankfurter was 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.
  
  His influence while he was at Harvard was widespread. Many of his students, after graduation, went into government service, especially during the early New Deal period. He helped many of them obtain a clerkship with one of the United States' leading judges, including Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Louis D. Brandies, and Learned Hand.

Works

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  • The Labor Injunction

    (This excellent treatise was prompted by the conviction of...)

    1930
  • The Commerce Clause under Marshall, Taney, and Waite

    (The power of the commerce clause touches most intimately ...)

    1937
  • The Business of the Supreme Court: A Study in the Federal Judicial System

    (This classic volume, first published in 1928, originated ...)

    1928
  • Selection of Cases Under the Interstate Commerce Act 1915
  • The Case for the Shorter Work Day 1916
  • Oregon Minimum Wage Cases 1917
  • The case of Sacco and Vanzetti: A critical analysis for lawyers and laymen 1927
  • The Public and Its Government 1930
  • Cases and Other Authorities on Federal Jurisdiction and Procedure 1931
  • Cases and Materials on Administrative Law 1932
  • Mr. Justice Holmes and the Supreme Court 1938
  • Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes 1947
  • The constitutional world of Mr. Justice Frankfurter: Some representative opinions 1947
  • Felix Frankfurter Reminisces 1960
  • Of Law and Life and Other Things That Matter: Papers and Addresses of Felix Frankfurter, 1956-1963 1965

Religion

Felix Frankfurter was a non-practicing Jew, and regarded religion as "an accident of birth".

Politics

Felix Frankfurter claimed that he was not a member of any political party. In the 1920s and 1930s, he supported a number of liberal causes, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. His 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.

Views

Felix Frankfurter's philosophy of judicial restraint gave greater weight to federal or state legislative action than to individual rights or the victims of legal injustice. In "Wolf v. Colorado" (1949), he insisted that the evidence illegally seized did not have to be excluded by the court, and in "Baker v. Carr" (1962), he unsuccessfully argued that inequitable legislative representation is a "political controversy" not subject to judicial review. Thus, Frankfurter’s pre-court liberal reputation gave way to a conservative label at a time when the liberal philosophy called for an active judicial process.

He was also a Zionist, and came to prominence as a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920, an organization created to protect the constitutional rights of members of ethnic, religious, and racial minorities.

Quotations: "Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess."

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

"The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes."

"Answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one."

"It simply is not true that war never settles anything."

Membership

Felix Frankfurter was member of the Phi Beta Kappa.

Personality

Felix Frankfurter was outgoing and energetic, and he thrived on bare-knuckled intellectual debate. This endeared him to his friends but alienated others.

Interests

• Politicians

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

Connections

In 1919, Felix Frankfurter married Marion Denman. The couple had no children.

Father:

Samuel Leopold Frankfurter

Mother:

Emilia Frankfurter

Spouse:

Marion Frankfurter

Sister:

Stella Estelle Frankfurter

Brother:

Otto N. Frankfurter

Brother:

Paul Frankfurter

Brother:

Siegfried Friedrich Frankfurter

Sister:

Ella Rogers

Friend:

Franklin Roosevelt

Friend:

Walter Lippmann

Friend:

Horace Kallen

Friend:

Louis Brandeis

References

• The Enigma of Felix Frankfurter This pathbreaking biography of Frankfurter explores the personality of the man as a key to understanding the Justice. Hirsch sees in Frankfurter's fascinating and complex persona a clue to the biggest mystery of all: the contrast between the brilliant and ambitious young immigrant rising by his intellect and charm to leadership in U.S. academic and political life.
  2014
• Felix Frankfurter and His Times: The Reform Years This book explores the years before Frankfurter's Supreme Court appointment and details such subjects as his tenure as a Harvard Law professor and his advisory relationship with Wilson and Roosevelt.
  1982
• Brandeis and Frankfurter: A Dual Biography Their story embraces the significant moments in the first six decades of 20th century American history: the "melting pot" the First World War, the Bisbee and Mooney cases, the first free-speech cases to come before the Supreme Court, the Balfour Declaration, Sacco and Vanzetti, the New Deal, the rise of Nazism, the birth of Israel, the internal security cases following the Second World War, the Alger Hiss and Rosenberg cases and the civil ights controversy.
  1984
• Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices This book tells the story of four great justices: their relationship with Roosevelt, with each other, and with the turbulent world of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. It also serves as a history of the modern Constitution itself.
  2011
• New Deal Justice This well-researched and engrossing book illuminates the constitutional jurisprudence of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's most notable appointees to the United States Supreme Court-Hugo L. Black, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert H. Jackson. 'New Deal Justice' draws extensively upon the memoirs, writings, opinions, and personal papers of these justices but also employs the insights of recent works on American legal, social, and political theory to dramatically alter the theoretical lens through which previous scholars have analyzed their decision making.
  1996