He was born on June 4, 1887 in Summit, New Jersey, United States, the second son and youngest of three children of Gustav Pollak, an Austrian-born editor and literary critic, and Celia (Heilprin) Pollak, daughter of the writer Michael Heilprin and sister of the naturalist Angelo Heilprin. Association with his mother's gifted relatives greatly influenced the boy.
His formal schooling was at Summit Academy and at DeWitt Clinton High School in New York City. After a year at Columbia, he transferred to Harvard, graduating in 1907 (A. B. , summa cum laude) and going on to the Harvard Law School (LL. B. , 1910).
Except for service on the legal staff of the War Industries Board in Washington, 1917-18, Pollak practised in New York City. Admitted to the bar in 1911, he soon had "the rare advantage, " as he put it, of working with Benjamin N. Cardozo. On January 1, 1914, after Cardozo became a judge, Pollak joined Cardozo's partner George H. Engelhard in forming a new firm, which lasted, with other partners added, until 1935.
Pollak's practice took him almost continuously into court. He found, as he reported, "much intellectual and human interest" in trial work. He was an active member of the state Law Revision Commission from its start in 1934 until his death. Pollak's greatest professional satisfaction, however, came from having had some part in a number of legal battles in behalf of persons persecuted for their opinions. He represented the Communist party leader Earl Browder before the United States Circuit Court of Appeals in 1940. In the Supreme Court, in two of the celebrated Scottsboro cases, he defended a group of young Negroes sentenced to death on charges of rape, getting the convictions reversed in one case because the accused Negroes were denied adequate counsel, and in the other because Negroes were systematically excluded from the jury list.
Pollak's greatest contribution to freedom came in defending Benjamin Gitlow, a left-wing socialist convicted shortly after the first World War under the New York State sedition law. The First Amendment restricts only Congress, and it was then very doubtful whether the Constitution protected free speech against action by the states. But in his appeal to the Supreme Court Pollak argued that freedom of speech and press are part of the "liberty" which the Fourteenth Amendment forbids the states to take away arbitrarily, and though the court ruled against Gitlow, it accepted this important principle, thus laying the foundation for many subsequent decisions safeguarding all the freedoms in the First Amendment against state suppressions.
In 1929-31, as part of the work of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, headed by George W. Wickersham, Pollak, together with his partner Carl S. Stern and Zechariah Chafee, Jr. , investigated the use of the "third degree" and other lawless methods in law enforcement and prosecution. Pollak had personal charge of investigating the famous Mooney-Billings case. His carefully documented conclusion that "the prosecution had been from beginning to end a great perversion of justice, " though not published as part of the Commission's report, contributed to the eventual pardoning of Mooney.
After his firm was dissolved in 1935 Pollak became counsel to Cohen, Cole, Weiss, and Wharton. On March 1, 1940, a federal court made him sole trustee of the vast Associated Gas & Electric Company. This complex task may have contributed to his death seven months later, from pneumonia complicated by a weak heart.
He died in New York City. Unlike many lawyers, Pollak would not let law absorb his life.
Pollak's career was memorable for two particular types of legal work: the protection of public interests and the defense of civil liberties. As counsel to the New York Park Commission, he fought many bitter legal battles which helped the state park program to overcome initial resistance. He was most famous for his defend of Communist Benjamin Gitlow before the Supreme Court and the Scottsboro Boys.
He frequently represented the rights of minority groups of whose opinions he disapproved. His decision to take a case was not determined by the popularity of the cause or the size of the retainer.
He had a genius for companionship and found recreation in "just plain old-fashioned talk. " His was no reflected light. He radiated delight in mental activity, keen flashes of wit, and a generous enthusiasm for justice.
His complete accuracy, his courtesy, and his technique of understatement won for him the confidence of all courts. He was by nature conservative.
On April 4, 1914, Pollak married his second cousin, Marion Heilprin, in Washington. They had two daughters, Minna Heilprin and Ann, and a son, Louis Heilprin.
