Spartacus, USA History, British History, Second World War, First World War, Germany,
Writers, US Journalists, US Journals, British Journalists, Author, Search Website, Email

 

Felix Frankfurter, the son of a Jewish merchant, was born in Vienna, Austria, on 15th November, 1882. Twelve years later the family emigrated to the United States. After graduating from New York City College in 1902, Frankfurter entered Harvard Law School. He studying for his degree he also edited the Harvard Law Review.

In 1906 Henry Stimson, a New York attorney, recruited Frankfurter as his assistant. When President William Howard Taft appointed Stimson as his secretary of war in 1911, he took Frankfurter along as law officer of the Bureau of Insular Affairs.

When Stimson lost office in 1914, Frankfurter returned to the Harvard Law School as professor of administrative law. Over the next few years he acquired a reputation for holding progressive political views. A founder member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) he criticised the Tennessee Anti-Evolution Law and joined the campaign to overturn the death sentence imposed on Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

Frankfurter gave legal advice to Franklin D. Roosevelt when he served as governor of New York (1929-1932). When Roosevelt became president he often consulted Frankfurter about the legal implication of his New Deal legislation.

In 1939 Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Frankfurter as a Supreme Court justice. Frankfurter took a strong stand on individual civil rights and this led to him being condemned as an "extreme liberal". However, Frankfurter upset many radicals by refusing to protect socialists and communists blacklisted during the McCarthy Era.

Frankfurter wrote several books including The Business of the Supreme Court (1927), Justice Holmes and the Supreme Court (1938), The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti (1954) and Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (1960). Felix Frankfurter died in Washington on 22nd February, 1965.

 

 

---

 

(1) Robert Lovett, wrote about Felix Frankfurter's involvement in the Tom Mooney case in his autobiography, All Our Years (1948)

It was inevitable that the case of Tom Mooney should become a fixation of liberals. An aggressive labor leader in San Francisco, he was deliberately "framed" as having caused an explosion which resulted in the death of several participants in a "preparedness" parade. Felix Frankfurter, on a mission to examine and report to President Wilson on labor difficulties in the West, saw through the plot and warned the president of the danger in the execution of an innocent man whose fate was exciting workers all over the world.

After commutation of the sentence to imprisonment for life, the long struggle began. One by one the folds of perjury were peeled away until the nucleus of the noxious growth was reached. The bluff cattle buyer "who had seen Mooney plant the bomb" was shown to have been miles away from the scene. He was also revealed as having written to a friend in Ohio to come to California to add another lie. Was he prosecuted for perjury? To ask the question is naive. Year after year governors and the Supreme Court of California wriggled like snakes to avoid a formal admission of the criminality of the state. It was not until the Christmas of 1938 that Tom Mooney was pardoned.

 

(2) Alice Hamilton, letter to Felix Frankfurter (15th July, 1959)

Why are we the only western country that lives in terror of native Communists. All the European countries have open and above-board political Communist parties some even have members of Parliament or whatever, and they do not have Un-Dutch Activities Committee. Look at the contrast between the English treatment of Klaus Fuchs and our treatment of the Rosenbergs. Fuchs is a scientist (which Rosenberg was not) he gave valuable atomic secrets to the Russians (Urey testified that Rosenberg did not know enough to do that) he confessed (the Rosenbergs refused to, though offered their lives as reward) Fuchs acted during the war, the Rosenbergs during peace.

 

 

Available from Amazon Books (order below)