page_title: Felix Frankfurter
section_title: First World War
hierarchical_section_title: Felix Frankfurter / First World War
caption_attribution_description: English: Judge Advocate General Logo
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: Frankfurter's work in Washington had impressed the faculty at Harvard Law School, who used a donation from the financier Jacob Schiff to create a position for him there after Louis Brandeis suggested that Schiff do this. He taught mainly administrative law and occasionally criminal law. With fellow professor James M. Landis, he advocated judicial restraint in dealing with government misdeeds, including greater freedom for administrative agencies from judicial oversight. He also served as counsel for the National Consumers League, arguing for Progressive causes such as minimum wage and restricted work hours. He was involved in the early years of The New Republic magazine after its founding by Herbert Croly.
  When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Frankfurter took a special leave from Harvard to serve as special assistant to the Secretary of War Newton D. Baker. He was appointed Judge Advocate General, supervising military courts-martial for the War Department.  He was commissioned a major in the Officers Reserve Corps but was not called to active duty.
  In September 1917, he was appointed counsel to a commission, the President's Mediation Committee, established by President Wilson to resolve major strikes threatening war production. Among the disturbances he investigated were the 1916 Preparedness Day Bombing in San Francisco, where he argued strongly that the radical leader Thomas Mooney had been framed and required a new trial. He also examined the copper industry in Arizona, where industry bosses solved industrial relations problems by having more than 1,000 strikers forcibly deported to New Mexico. Overall, Frankfurter's work gave him an opportunity to learn firsthand about labor politics and extremism, including anarchism, communism and revolutionary socialism. He came to sympathize with labor issues, arguing that "unsatisfactory, remediable social conditions, if unattended, give rise to radical movements far transcending the original impulse."  His activities led the public to view him as a radical lawyer and supporter of radical principles. Former President Theodore Roosevelt accused him of being "engaged in excusing men precisely like the Bolsheviki in Russia."
caption: U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General logo
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