Person

Felix Frankfurter

Bylines

The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti

After Sacco and Vanzetti's final appeal was rejected, Felix Frankfurter, then a professor at Harvard Law School, laid out the many problems with their trials.

by Felix Frankfurter via The Atlantic on March 1, 1927

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Photograph of Felix Frankfurter opening a briefcase.

A Prisoner of His Own Restraint

Felix Frankfurter was renowned as a liberal lawyer and advocate. Why did he turn out to be such a conservative Supreme Court justice?

by Jed S. Rakoff via New York Review of Books on October 13, 2022

The Justice Who Wanted the Supreme Court to Get Out of the Way

Felix Frankfurter warned that politicians, not the courts, should make policy.

by John Fabian Witt via The New Republic on August 26, 2022

Supreme Court Justice Harlan F. Stone photographed with a book.

The Supreme Court's World War II Battles

Cliff Sloan’s new book explains how the Franklin Roosevelt-shaped Court wrestled with individual rights as the nation fought to save itself and the world.

by Robert L. Tsai via Washington Monthly on September 22, 2023

President Truman in the Oval Office after presenting three Korean War veterans with the Medal of Honor.

When History Becomes Precedent in the OLC

Official decisions about military intervention and executive power are often based on outdated historical interpretations.

by Mary L. Dudziak via Balkinization on January 16, 2023

McGeorge Bundy with Lyndon Johnson in 1967

American Mandarins

David Halberstam’s title The Best and the Brightest was steeped in irony. Did these presidential advisers earn it?

by Edward Tenner via The American Scholar on March 24, 2022

Supreme Court justices William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, and Owen J. Roberts at the White House.

FDR’s Compliant Justices

The Supreme Court’s deference to FDR during World War II resulted in unjustifiable ethical breaches.

by Jed S. Rakoff via New York Review of Books on November 14, 2024

Black students from Alabama State College stage a mass rally on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol in 1960.

What’s Behind the Fight Over Whether Nonprofits Can Be Forced to Disclose Donors’ Names

A reminder of how tricky it is to balance protecting transparency and freedom of association.

by Helen J. Knowles-Gardner via Made By History on January 16, 2024

In July 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt swore in Attorney General Robert Jackson as a Supreme Court justice. Jackson and Roosevelt often played poker together.

How FDR’s Influence Over the Supreme Court Transformed History

In “The Court at War,” Cliff Sloan examines the close relationship between FDR and the high court during World War II.

by Michael Bobelian via Washington Post on September 22, 2023

Illustration depicting workmen and firemen dragging a fireman and engineer from a Baltimore freight train during the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad strike.

The Railway Labor Act Allowed Congress to Break the Rail Strike. We Should Get Rid of It.

Congress was able to break the rail strike last week because of a century-old law designed to weaken the disruptive power of unions.

by Nelson Lichtenstein, Andrew Yamakawa Elrod via Jacobin on December 7, 2022

Supreme Court justices with their heads in boxes made from the Constitution.

Originalism Is Bunk. Liberal Lawyers Shouldn’t Fall For It.

The more liberals present originalist arguments, the more they legitimate originalism.

by Ruth Marcus via Washington Post on December 1, 2022

Headstones in Mount Auburn cemetery. Photograph by Daderot at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18003519.

A Tour of Mount Auburn Cemetery

Two centuries of New England intellectual history through the lives and ideas of people who are memorialized there.

by Kathryn Ostrofsky on September 7, 2022

President William Howard Taft signs New Mexico into statehood at the White House. The signing was witnessed by dignitaries on Jan. 6, 1912

Building Uncle Sam, Inc.

These Progressive Era Republicans wanted to run the Federal government like a business.

by Paul Moreno via Law & Liberty on May 25, 2022

Chuck Grassley looking at his phone during confirmation hearing

A Brief Guide to Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, the Silliest Ritual In Washington

Supreme Court confirmation hearings feature senators talking a lot, and nominees nodding politely until they can leave.

by Jay Willis via Balls And Strikes on March 15, 2022

An elderly Robert Welch sitting at a desk in a wood-paneled office.

We All Live in the John Birch Society’s World Now

In his lifetime, Robert Welch toiled in the mocked and marginal fringe. Today his ideas are the mainstream of the American right.

by Chris Lehmann via The New Republic on November 23, 2021

Illustration of a gavel by Vahram Muradyan

Why Do Americans Have So Few Rights?

How we came to rely on the courts, instead of the democratic process, for justice.

by Samuel Moyn via The New Republic on March 9, 2021

Making the Supreme Court Safe for Democracy

Beyond packing schemes, we need to diminish the high court’s power.

by Samuel Moyn, Ryan D. Doerfler via The New Republic on October 13, 2020

Rumor Mill

Watching fake news spread in 1942.

by Tracy Campbell via Lapham’s Quarterly on May 20, 2020

The Last Time Democracy Almost Died

By examining the upheaval of the nineteen-thirties, we can recognize similarities between today and democracy's last near-death experience.

by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on January 27, 2020

The Contradictions of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

The Supreme Court justice may have been heralded by many of his progressive peers, but the legacy he left behind is far more ambiguous.

by Brenda Wineapple via The Nation on August 13, 2019

No Law Without Politics (No Politics Without Law)

The way to address politicization in the courts is not de-politicization but counter-politicization.

by Jedediah Britton-Purdy via LPE Project on October 2, 2018

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