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Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment
by Brad Snyder
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.
Two 8-page black-and-white inserts
"Georgetown law professor Snyder takes the full measure of Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) in this multidimensional portrait...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." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A well-worth-the-effort doorstop study of an indispensable American jurist...An exemplary biography of a true public servant, especially refreshing in today's toxic political climate." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Felix Frankfurter was one of the most significant figures of the American twentieth century…Brad Snyder has given this protean man the major biography he has long deserved. Democratic Justice is vivid, meticulous, and irresistibly absorbing." - Nicholas Lemann, Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism and dean emeritus, Columbia Journalism School, and author of Transaction Man
"Exhaustively researched, gracefully written, persuasively argued, and historically grounded, [Democratic Justice] enriches our understanding of American democracy, politics, jurisprudence, and the liberal establishment…One comes away from a reading of this book with a profound and renewed admiration for Felix Frankfurter and the obligation to reexamine his steadfast adherence to what he believed to be the limited role of an appointed judiciary in a liberal democracy." - David Nasaw, author of The Last Million and The Patriarch
"For years people interested in constitutional law and US history have missed a comprehensive biography of Felix Frankfurter, in his time the most influential figure in constitutional law and an important contributor to progressive thought and politics. Finally we have one…This is a major achievement that deserves to be widely read." - Mark Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law Emeritus, Harvard Law School
This information about Democratic Justice was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Brad Snyder is a professor of constitutional law and twentieth-century American legal history at Georgetown University Law Center. In addition to his legal scholarship, he has written for Politico, Slate, and the Washington Post. He lives on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
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