# Felix Frankfurter *American jurist and associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1939–1962)* Felix Frankfurter (November 15, 1882 – February 22, 1965) was a Vienna-born American jurist who sat as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1939 to 1962 and argued for judicial restraint.[^1] Before joining the Court he taught at Harvard Law School, worked under Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, served as a Judge Advocate General in World War I, helped found the American Civil Liberties Union, and advised President Franklin D. Roosevelt.[^1] Roosevelt nominated him after [[Benjamin N. Cardozo]] died in 1938. The Senate Judiciary Committee required him to testify in 1939 before confirming him, a practice that became routine in the 1950s.[^1] His Court record includes the majority opinion in *Minersville School District v. Gobitis* (1940), a dissent in *West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette* (1943), and the phrase "all deliberate speed" in *Brown II* (1955).[^1] The project's procedural-due-process catalogue lists his concurrence in *Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath*, 341 U.S. 123 (1951), as a foundational statement of that doctrine.[^2] He retired after a stroke in 1962 and was succeeded by [[Arthur Goldberg]].[^1] ## Early life and education Frankfurter was born in Vienna, at the time within Austria-Hungary, on November 15, 1882. He was the third of the six children of Leopold Frankfurter, a merchant, and Emma (Winter) Frankfurter.[^3] In 1894, aged twelve, he came to the United States with his family. They settled on the Lower East Side of New York City, and he attended P.S. 25 and Townsend Harris High School.[^3] He finished at City College of New York in 1902 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He then worked in the city's Tenement House Department to pay for law school.[^3] At Harvard Law School he edited the *Harvard Law Review* and finished at the top of his class.[^3] ## Early career In 1906 he started at the New York firm Hornblower, Byrne, Miller & Potter. That same year he became assistant to Henry Stimson, then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.[^4] President [[William Howard Taft]] named Stimson Secretary of War in 1911, and Stimson then made Frankfurter law officer of the Bureau of Insular Affairs.[^4] Frankfurter backed Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose campaign in 1912. After Woodrow Wilson won, he lost faith in the established parties and called himself "politically homeless".[^4] ## First World War Harvard Law School created a faculty post for him with a donation from the financier Jacob Schiff, made at the suggestion of [[Louis Brandeis]].[^5] His teaching centred on administrative law. With James M. Landis, he argued for judicial restraint and for freeing administrative agencies from close judicial oversight.[^5] He was also counsel to the National Consumers League on minimum-wage and working-hours causes.[^5] After the United States entered the war in 1917, he left Harvard on special leave and received a major's commission in the United States Army Reserve. He oversaw courts-martial as a Judge Advocate General and was special assistant to Secretary of War Newton D. Baker until 1918.[^5] From September 1917 he was counsel to the President's Mediation Committee, which Wilson created to settle strikes affecting war production.[^5] In that role he examined the 1916 Preparedness Day Bombing in San Francisco and argued that Thomas Mooney had been framed and should be retried.[^5] He also examined the Arizona copper industry, where more than 1,000 strikers had been forcibly deported to New Mexico.[^5] ## Post First World War At Brandeis's urging he became more active in Zionism. The two men lobbied Wilson to support the Balfour Declaration.[^6] He took part in the 1918 founding conference of the American Jewish Congress in Philadelphia. In 1919 he attended the Paris Peace Conference as a Zionist delegate.[^6] Also in 1919 he married Marion Denman, a Smith College graduate; they had no children.[^6] In November 1919 he chaired a meeting backing U.S. recognition of the Soviet Union. In 1920 he was among the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union.[^6] ## Advisor to President Roosevelt Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, and Frankfurter soon became a close adviser. He opposed the economic plans of Raymond Moley, Adolf Berle and Rexford Tugwell.[^7] He steered young lawyers into New Deal posts, among them Thomas Corcoran, Benjamin Cohen, and Alger and Donald Hiss, and they were nicknamed "Felix's Happy Hot Dogs".[^7] A 1935 newspaper listing described Alger Hiss as the "right hand man" of Solicitor General [[Stanley Forman Reed]].[^7] Frankfurter turned down a seat on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. In 1933 he also declined the office of Solicitor General of the United States.[^7] He had studied at Oxford University in 1920 and returned there in 1933–34 as visiting Eastman professor of law.[^7] ## Supreme Court justice Cardozo died in July 1938. Roosevelt asked Frankfurter for possible successors, found none suitable, and nominated Frankfurter instead.[^8] Witnesses opposed the nomination before the Senate Judiciary Committee. They objected to his role as the president's unofficial adviser, his ties to special-interest groups, and the lack of any justice from west of the Mississippi. They also cited his foreign birth and alleged links to an anti-Christian movement, which they cast as part of Communist infiltration.[^8] The committee asked him to appear. He was the second Supreme Court nominee to testify, after [[Harlan F. Stone]] in 1924, and the first to be asked to do so.[^8] The Senate confirmed him by voice vote on January 17, 1939, and he served from January 30, 1939, to August 28, 1962.[^8] He wrote 247 opinions for the Court, 132 concurring opinions and 251 dissents. He usually declined to apply the federal Constitution to the states.[^8] His *Gobitis* majority opinion (1940) applied judicial restraint. After the Court repudiated it in *Barnette* (1943), his dissent described his minority-group background as immaterial.[^1] In *Brown II* (1955) he proposed "all deliberate speed" as the standard for gradual racial integration.[^1] He held redistricting nonjusticiable in *Colegrove v. Green* (1946) and *Baker v. Carr* (1962). His majority opinion in *Gomillion v. Lightfoot* (1960) allowed review only under the Fifteenth Amendment.[^1] He wrote the majority in *Beauharnais v. Illinois* (1952) and dissented in *Glasser v. United States* (1942) and *Trop v. Dulles* (1958).[^1] His concurrence in *Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath* (1951) is one of the project's catalogued procedural-due-process authorities.[^2] In 1948 he hired William Thaddeus Coleman Jr. as a law clerk. In 1960 he declined to hire [[Ruth Bader Ginsburg]], citing gender roles.[^1] ## Relationships with fellow justices He tried to shape new colleagues and succeeded with [[Tom C. Clark]], Harold Hitz Burton, [[Charles Evans Whittaker]] and [[Sherman Minton]].[^9] [[William J. Brennan Jr.]] resisted, and Frankfurter turned against him after *Irvin v. Dowd*.[^9] With [[Fred M. Vinson]], who became Chief Justice, he showed deference while seeking influence.[^9] He clashed with [[Hugo Black]] and [[William O. Douglas]], calling their work "result-oriented" and "demagogic", and came to be seen as a conservative. He called Chief Justice [[Earl Warren]]'s work "dishonest nonsense".[^9] He grouped [[Frank Murphy]] and Wiley Blount Rutledge with them as a liberal "Axis". That group held that the Fourteenth Amendment carried Bill of Rights protections to the states. Frankfurter feared this would displace state control of criminal justice.[^9] Warren complained, "All [he] does is talk, talk, talk," and Black said, "I thought Felix was going to hit me today, he got so mad."[^9] In the Court's conferences he habitually lectured colleagues for forty-five minutes or longer.[^9] ## Retirement and death A stroke ended his service in 1962, and Arthur Goldberg took his seat.[^10] President John F. Kennedy awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963.[^10] He died of congestive heart failure in 1965, aged 82. He is interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[^10] ## Legacy His papers are held in two large collections, at the Library of Congress Manuscript Division and at Harvard University. Both are open to researchers and available on microfilm.[^11] In 1972 more than a thousand pages, including correspondence with Lyndon B. Johnson, were found to have been stolen from the Library of Congress. The theft is unsolved.[^11] He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1932 and the American Philosophical Society in 1939.[^11] ## Writings His books include *The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti: A Critical Analysis for Lawyers and Laymen* (1927), *The Business of the Supreme Court: A Study in the Federal Judicial System* (1928) and *Mr. Justice Holmes and the Supreme Court* (1938).[^12] His memoir, *Felix Frankfurter Reminisces*, was published in 1960 from recorded talks with H.B. Phillips.[^12] With James M. Landis he wrote *The Compact Clause of the Constitution: A Study in Interstate Adjustments* (*Yale Law Journal* 34, 1925).[^12] ## Notes [^1]: Wikipedia, *Felix Frankfurter*, lead section (revision 1381823514, retrieved 2026-10-26) — life dates; service 1939–1962; career outline; 1939 committee testimony; principal opinions and dissents; clerk hiring; retirement and successor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Frankfurter [^2]: Supreme Court of the United States, *Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath*, 341 U.S. 123 (1951) — the case and Frankfurter's concurrence, catalogued by the project (Theory 12, procedural due process) as a foundational procedural-due-process statement. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/341/123/ [^3]: Wikipedia, *Felix Frankfurter*, § Early life and education (revision 1381823514) — birth, parents, 1894 immigration, schooling, City College 1902, Harvard Law School. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Frankfurter [^4]: Wikipedia, *Felix Frankfurter*, § Early career (revision 1381823514) — 1906 law firm and Stimson posts; 1911 Bureau of Insular Affairs; 1912 campaign; "politically homeless". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Frankfurter [^5]: Wikipedia, *Felix Frankfurter*, § First World War (revision 1381823514) — Harvard appointment; National Consumers League; 1917–1918 military and War Department service; President's Mediation Committee; Mooney; Arizona deportations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Frankfurter [^6]: Wikipedia, *Felix Frankfurter*, § Post First World War (revision 1381823514) — Zionist activity; American Jewish Congress 1918; Paris Peace Conference 1919; marriage; 1919 Soviet-recognition meeting; ACLU 1920. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Frankfurter [^7]: Wikipedia, *Felix Frankfurter*, § Advisor to President Roosevelt (revision 1381823514) — adviser role from 1933; "Happy Hot Dogs"; 1935 listing; declined posts; Oxford 1920 and 1933–34. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Frankfurter [^8]: Wikipedia, *Felix Frankfurter*, § Supreme Court justice (revision 1381823514) — nomination; objections; testimony; voice-vote confirmation January 17, 1939; service dates; opinion counts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Frankfurter [^9]: Wikipedia, *Felix Frankfurter*, § Relationships with fellow justices (revision 1381823514) — influence on colleagues; disputes with Black, Douglas, Warren; incorporation dispute; quoted remarks; conference conduct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Frankfurter [^10]: Wikipedia, *Felix Frankfurter*, § Retirement and death (revision 1381823514) — 1962 retirement; Goldberg; 1963 Medal of Freedom; 1965 death; burial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Frankfurter [^11]: Wikipedia, *Felix Frankfurter*, § Legacy (revision 1381823514) — papers collections; 1972 theft; academy elections 1932 and 1939. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Frankfurter [^12]: Wikipedia, *Felix Frankfurter*, § Writings (revision 1381823514) — books and articles with dates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Frankfurter