page_title: Felix Frankfurter
section_title: Supreme Court justice
hierarchical_section_title: Felix Frankfurter / Supreme Court justice
caption_attribution_description: English: Franklin Roosevelt's nomination of Felix Frankfurter to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.
context_page_description: Felix Frankfurter was an Austrian-American lawyer, professor, and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Frankfurter served on the Supreme Court from 1939 to 1962 and was a noted advocate of judicial restraint in the judgments of the Court.
  Frankfurter was born in Vienna, Austria, and immigrated to New York City at the age of 12. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Frankfurter worked for Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. During World War I, Frankfurter served as Judge Advocate General. After the war, he helped found the American Civil Liberties Union and returned to his position as professor at Harvard Law School. He became a friend and adviser of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who appointed him to fill the Supreme Court vacancy caused by the death of Benjamin Cardozo.
  Frankfurter served on the Court until his retirement in 1962, and was succeeded by Arthur Goldberg. Frankfurter wrote the Court's majority opinions in cases such as Minersville School District v. Gobitis, Gomillion v. Lightfoot, and Beauharnais v. Illinois. He wrote dissenting opinions in notable cases such as Baker v.
context_section_description: Following the death of Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo in July 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked his old friend Frankfurter for recommendations of prospective candidates for the vacancy. Finding none on the list to suit his criteria, Roosevelt nominated Frankfurter. The Senate confirmation hearing on the nomination of Frankfurter was notable for the opposition which arose. In addition to the objection that he was considered to be the President's unofficial advisor, that he was affiliated with special interest groups, that there were now no justices from west of the Mississippi, opposing groups and individuals appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee pointed to Frankfurter as foreign-born and deemed to be affiliated with an anti-Christian movement viewed as part of a broader Communist infiltration into the country. The controversy permanently changed the process which had been followed for 150 years, being the first time that a nominee for the Supreme Court appeared in person before the Judiciary Committee.
  Frankfurter served from January 30, 1939 to August 28, 1962. He wrote 247 opinions for the Court, 132 concurring opinions, and 251 dissents. He became the court's most outspoken advocate of judicial restraint, the view that courts should not interpret the constitution in such a way as to impose sharp limits upon the authority of the legislative and executive branches.  He also usually refused to apply the federal Constitution to the states.  In the case of Irvin v. Dowd, Frankfurter stated what was for him a frequent theme: "The federal judiciary has no power to sit in judgment upon a determination of a state court... Something that thus goes to the very structure of our federal system in its distribution of power between the United States and the state is not a mere bit of red tape to be cut, on the assumption that this Court has general discretion to see justice done...".
  In his judicial restraint philosophy, Frankfurter was strongly influenced by his close friend and mentor Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who had taken a firm stand during his tenure on the bench against the doctrine of "economic due process". Frankfurter revered Justice Holmes, often citing Holmes in his opinions. In practice, this meant Frankfurter was generally willing to uphold the actions of those branches against constitutional challenges so long as they did not "shock the conscience." Frankfurter was particularly well known as a scholar of civil procedure.
  Frankfurter's adherence to the judicial restraint philosophy was shown in the 1940 opinion he wrote for the court in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, a case involving Jehovah's Witnesses students who had been expelled from school due to their refusal to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. He rejected claims that First Amendment rights should be protected by law, and urged deference to the decisions of the elected school board officials. He stated that religious belief "does not relieve the citizen from the discharge of political responsibilities" and that exempting the children from the flag-saluting ceremony "might cast doubts in the minds of other children" and reduce their loyalty to the nation. Justice Harlan Fiske Stone issued a lone dissent. The court's decision was followed by hundreds of violent attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses throughout the country. It was overturned in March 1943 by the Supreme Court decision on West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette. A frequent ally, Supreme Court justice Robert H. Jackson, wrote the majority opinion in this case, which reversed the decision only three years prior in poetic passionate terms as a fundamental constitutional principle, that no government authority has the right to define official dogma and require its affirmation by citizens. Frankfurter's extensive dissent began by raising and then rejecting the notion that as a Jew, he ought "to particularly protect minorities," although he did say that his personal political sympathies were with the majority opinion.  He reiterated his view that 
caption: Frankfurter's Supreme Court nomination
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