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Name:
Abe Fortas
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
Dates:
Born: June 19, 1910 in Memphis, Tennessee
Died: April 5, 1982 in Washington, D.C.
Yale Law Degree: 1933
Undersecretary of the Interior: 1942 - 1946
Appointed to the Supreme Court: October 4, 1965
Resigned: May 14, 1969
Biography:
The son of Jewish immigrants, Abe Fortas, was educated at Yale Law School at a time when
legal realism was at its height; as a result, Fortas learned to treate law and court
decisions as important tools of social policy. Long before he arrived at the Supreme Court,
he was a staunch advocate to individual rights and civil liberties. He fought against the
imposition of martial law in Hawaii during World War II as well as the forced internment of
Japanese-Americans. After World War II he defended people who had become victims of the
McCarthy witchhunts and served pro bono in two key legal cases, one which updated the legal
definition of insanity and another which established the legal right to counsel in all felony cases.
Over time he became on of Lyndon Johnson's most trusted advisors and when Justice Goldberg retired, Fortas was offered that position on the Supreme Court - an offer which he was anxious to accept. While on the Court, Fortas was an important participant in the Warren Court majorities which expanded civil rights and civil liberties.
Unfortunately for Fortas, he had become accustomed to a high salary while serving as a lawyer in a popular Washington, D.C. lawfirm, something he lost when he served on the Supreme Court. In an effort to supplement his salary he participated in exchanges which many regarded as improper. One involved teaching a summer course at American University in exchange for $15,000 raised by friends and former clients, an arrangement which helped cost Fortas the job as Chief Justice when Earl Warren resigned. A second involved a $20,000 honorarium for serving on the board of a charitable foundation run by another former client; this time he was forced to resign in disgrace (the first Supreme Court justice ever to do so). Even his old lawfirm wouldn't take him back and he had to start over, creating a new firm which became popular in its own right.
Because Fortas did much more work as a lawyer than as a judge, scholars don't have much to work with when trying to understand his judicial philosophy. His ideas regarding First Amendment and Free Speech jurisprudence were perhaps most developed and his writings became an important part of the arguments against Justice Hugo Black's distinction between speech and conduct. According to Fortas, both actual speech acts and expressive conduct merited First Amendment protection; as a consequence, he was supported claims by those who argued that they had a right to nonviolent and nondisruptive protests which involved more than just speeches and signs. On the other hand, Fortas did not support the claims of those who wanted protection for speech and conduct Fortas regarded as violent and disrputive.
As with his earlier work as a lawyer in establishing indigents' right to counsel in felony cases, as a Supreme Court Justice he continued to emphasize the importance of regularity in court proceedures and the necessity for the police to scrupulously obey the law. Sometimes he even went further than other liberals on the Warren Court - for example, the majority there was only willing to extend Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination to things like testimony. Fortas, however, wanted the protections to apply to all "affirmative, volitional actions," which would include handwriting analyses, blood samples, etc.
Also Known As: none
Alternate Spellings: none
Common Misspellings: none
Related Resources:
What are Political and Legal Philosophy
The Philosophy of Politics and the Philosophy of Law are often studied separately, but they are presented here jointly because they both come back to the same thing: the study of force. Politics is the study of political force in the general community, while jurisprudence is the study of how laws can and should be used to achieve political and social goals.What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and epistemology?
