Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment

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. (Aug.)