Democratic Justice
Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment
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- $57.99
Publisher Description
The definitive biography of Felix Frankfurter, Supreme Court justice and champion of twentieth-century American liberal democracy.
The conventional wisdom about Felix Frankfurter—Harvard law professor and Supreme Court justice—is that he struggled to fill the seat once held by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Scholars have portrayed Frankfurter as a judicial failure, a liberal lawyer turned conservative justice, and the Warren Court’s principal villain. And yet none of these characterizations rings true.
A pro-government, pro-civil rights liberal who rejected shifting political labels, Frankfurter advocated for judicial restraint—he believed that people should seek change not from the courts but through the democratic political process. Indeed, he knew American presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson, advised Franklin Roosevelt, and inspired his students and law clerks to enter government service.
Organized around presidential administrations and major political and world events, this definitive biography chronicles Frankfurter’s impact on American life. As a young government lawyer, he befriended Theodore Roosevelt, Louis Brandeis, and Holmes. As a Harvard law professor, he earned fame as a civil libertarian, Zionist, and New Deal power broker. As a justice, he hired the first African American law clerk and helped the Court achieve unanimity in outlawing racially segregated schools in Brown v. Board of Education.
In this sweeping narrative, Brad Snyder offers a full and fascinating portrait of the remarkable life and legacy of a long misunderstood American figure. This is the biography of an Austrian Jewish immigrant who arrived in the United States at age eleven speaking not a word of English, who by age twenty-six befriended former president Theodore Roosevelt, and who by age fifty was one of Franklin Roosevelt’s most trusted advisers. It is the story of a man devoted to democratic ideals, a natural orator and often overbearing justice, whose passion allowed him to amass highly influential friends and helped create the liberal establishment.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Georgetown law professor Snyder (A Well-Paid Slave) takes the full measure of Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) in this multidimensional portrait. Along the way, Snyder illuminates the anticommunist Palmer raids of 1919 and 1920, the prosecution of accused terrorists Sacco and Vanzetti, the fight to implement the New Deal, the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, Brown v. Board of Education, and more. Paying close attention to Frankfurter's influence as an adviser and talent scout for Franklin Roosevelt and other Democratic presidents, Snyder suggests that the justice's greatest contribution to liberal democracy may have been to help guide many of his former clerks and Harvard Law School students, including secretary of state Dean Acheson and Kennedy adviser Richard Goodwin, into public service. Light is also shed on the rivalry between Frankfurter, who firmly believed "that the powers of Congress and the president trumped those of the Supreme Court," and justices Earl Warren, Hugo Black, and William O. Douglas, whom he accused of being "judicial supremacists." Occasional criticism of Frankfurter's decisions, including his upholding of the military-ordered exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, is softened by Snyder's support for his subject's commitment to judicial restraint. The book's prodigious research impresses, offering valuable insights into the deliberations and power plays behind landmark cases and major legislation. This is the definitive biography of a towering judicial figure.
