BOOK REVIEW | REVIEW BY RICHARD A. FORSTEN, ESQUIRE
Justice for the Justice
T
he conventional take on Justice Felix Frankfurter is that he was a brilliant law professor, a well-connected, behind-the-scenes political operative who was friends with both Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt, and an intellectual leader of progressive causes, for whom great things were predicted when he ascended to the Supreme Court bench — but who ultimately disappointed. Frankfurter was never a leader. His professorial style alienated many of his colleagues (due to his lecturing them as if they were law students during the Court’s conferences). He also proved to be more conservative than other liberal members of the Court (Black, Douglas, Warren, Murphy, etc.), which hindered his effectiveness. In the end he was generally unable generate consensus. At least, that is the conventional take. Professor Brad Snyder does much to correct this caricature, though, in his new book — and the first major biography of the Justice — Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment.
Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment By Brad Snyder W.W. Norton & Co., 2022
To begin, even before his appointment, Frankfurter had an extraordinary career and impact on American politics and law, such that he would be of interest to historians. Born in Vienna in 1882, Frankfurter and his family came to the United States when he was 12 years old, knowing not a word of English. Yet he graduated first in his 1906 Harvard Law School class. In an age of pervasive anti-Semitism, Frankfurter was the first Jewish lawyer hired by Hornblower, Byrne, Miller & Potter (today’s Wilke, Farr & Gallagher), although he was there only a few months before receiving a call from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Henry L. Stimson — thus beginning a lifelong career of public service and teaching. Frankfurter was a top campaign aide to Stimson when he ran unsuccessfully for Governor of New York, and, during that campaign, Frankfurter got to know Teddy Roosevelt (he would later work on Roosevelt’s 1912 presidential campaign, not the last Roosevelt presidential campaign on which he would work). Frankfurter came to Washington, D.C. in 1911 and took a job in the War Department when Stimson was named Secretary of War. Already friends with Louis Brandeis before moving to Washington, during Frankfurter’s time in the nation’s capital he was introduced to, and became friends with, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. The boarding house in which Frankfurter, and other young idealistic lawyers and professionals, lived was dubbed the “House of Truth,” and became known as one of the leading intellectual gathering places in the capital. With the end of the Taft administration, Frankfurter became a professor at Harvard law, where he remained a professor until his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1939. But even during his time at Harvard, Frankfurter would be called back periodically to Washington. He worked in the War Department during the First World War, and President Wilson appointed the still only 35-year-old Frankfurter head of the newly-created War Labor Policies Board, a move praised by the press. It was also during this time that Frankfurter got to know Franklin Roosevelt, who was then serving as Secretary
30 DSBA Bar Journal | www.dsba.org