Who is justice frankfurter

During Franklin D. Frankfurter was made a Supreme Court justice in From the beginning his opinions were challenged as extremely liberal. However, he took a resolute position on the Constitution and its place in American society.

He understood that this document could survive only so long as the Court guarded its prerogatives. Decisions in the civil rights area found Frankfurter strongly for the individual. His opinion on the movie The Miracle was typical. When the highest court in New York State ruled the film sacrilegious, Frankfurter saw this as an invasion of private rights. He was also strongly opposed to congressional committees and their investigating procedures. His vigorous criticism of the conviction and execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the anarchists accused of bank robbery and murder in Braintree, Mass.

In all, Frankfurter authored or edited 12 books and many scholarly articles for law journals, and he frequently contributed articles to the New Republic, which he helped to found. In his speeches and writings, Frankfurter remained a steady and passionate champion of the poor, the downtrodden, the persecuted, and the wrongly convicted. Frankfurter also conveyed an unshakeable love for his adopted country and its laws and institutions.

He had a fine sense of the American democratic process that emphasized the supremacy of the legislature, and he held to a belief that appointed judges should not inject their personal viewpoints into law. He increasingly advocated that the will of the people be exercised through their elected legislatures and not by an appointed judiciary. Frankfurter influenced both his students and the government.

He was a nationally recognized expert on labor law, constitutional law, and civil procedure. Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Brandeis relied on Frankfurter to appoint their law clerks, who usually were his top students. Many of them went on to serve important posts in the New Deal. After Franklin D.

He enthusiastically supported the social and economic engineering of the programs Congress adopted, some of which he helped to formulate. When Justice Benjamin N. The Senate confirmed his appointment on January 16, , and he was sworn in on January On the Court, Frankfurter initially voted to uphold the constitutionality of New Deal programs.

He generally supported the civil rights of minorities, personally opposed the death penalty, and often voted to rein in the powers of the police. He became the most fervent proponent of judicial restraint, often lecturing in his opinions on the propriety of allowing the elected branches of government great leeway in their interpretations of the Constitution and frequently quoting Holmes and Brandeis in his opinions as a tribute to their judicial self-restraint.

He also tended to sustain precedents as a matter of principle. In a notable majority opinion in Minersville School District v. Gobitis , Frankfurter upheld the constitutionality of a Pennsylvania law requiring schoolchildren to salute the American flag. In Jones v.

Black , William O. Douglas , and Francis W. Murphy stated in a dissent that Gobitis should be overturned. Barnette , a similar flag-salute case, in which the Court reversed Gobitis.

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