Abe Fortas

Abe Fortas was the youngest of five children born to Orthodox Jewish immigrants Woolfe Fortas (Yiddish: וואָלף פאָרטאַס) and Rachel "Ray" Berzansky Fortas (Yiddish: רחל בערזשאנסקי פארטאס) in Memphis, Tennessee. Woolfe, originally from Russia, worked as a cabinetmaker, and together with Rachel, who hailed from Lithuania, they operated a store. Fortas developed a lifelong passion for music, largely influenced by his father, who encouraged him to play the violin—an instrument he would cherish throughout his life. He took violin lessons from local Catholic nuns at St. Patrick's School, which was just a block away from his home on Pontotoc Street. He also studied chamber music with the leader of a local trio. Because of his musical talents, he earned the nickname "Fiddlin' Abe Fortas." By the age of thirteen, he was playing in a dance band called the "Blue Medley Boys," which helped support him and his family. After graduating second in his class from South Side High School in 1926 at the age of sixteen, Fortas won a scholarship to Southwestern at Memphis, which is now known as Rhodes College. During his college years, he supported himself by working as a shoe salesman and performing as a violinist, as well as giving violin lessons to local children. Although he initially considered pursuing a degree in music, he ultimately decided to focus on English and political science, graduating at the top of his class in 1930.

Fortas earned scholarships from both Harvard Law School and Yale Law School but ultimately decided to attend Yale, becoming the youngest law student there at 20 years old. He became editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal and graduated cum laude and second in the class of 1933. One of his professors, William O. Douglas, was impressed with Fortas, and Douglas arranged for Fortas to stay at Yale to become an assistant professor of law.

Shortly thereafter, Fortas took on a series of government positions, including with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Washington, D.C. In 1937, he was made assistant director of the public utilities division at the SEC. Throughout this period, Fortas commuted between New Haven and Washington in order to fulfill his responsibilities both to Yale and to the government.

In 1935, Fortas married Carolyn E. Agger, who became a successful tax lawyer. They had no children, and after his appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States, they lived at 3210 R Street NW in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C.

Fortas was first cousin of the social anthropologist, Meyer Fortes.

Just like his days in Memphis, Fortas was an amateur musician who played the violin in a string quartet, called the "N Street Strictly-no-refunds String Quartet" on Sunday evenings in Washington. Fortas was friends with well-known musicians such as Rudolf Serkin, Isaac Stern and Pablo Casals. Fortas was a good friend of the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín, calling him "a spectacularly great figure". Fortas visited the island often, frequently lobbied for the island's interests in Congress, participated in drafting the Constitution of Puerto Rico, and gave legal advice to Marín's administration whenever requested.

The Puerto Rican actor José Ferrer portrayed Fortas in the film Gideon's Trumpet (1980).

Leaving Yale in 1939, Fortas served as general counsel of the Public Works Administration and then as Undersecretary of the Interior in Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. While he was working at the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes, introduced him to a young congressman from Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson.

In October 1943, Fortas was granted a leave of absence from the Department of Interior to enlist in the United States Navy for World War II. Assigned to Naval Training Station Sampson, New York for his initial training, in December 1943 he was honorably discharged as the result of an arrested case of ocular tuberculosis that caused doctors to deem him medically unfit. He had resigned from his position at the Interior department while in the navy, but was reappointed in January 1944. In 1945, he was appointed by President Harry S. Truman as an advisor to the U.S. delegation during the organizational meeting of the United Nations (UN) in San Francisco, and at the 1946 General Assembly meeting in London.

In 1946, after leaving government service, Fortas founded a law firm, Arnold & Fortas, with Thurman Arnold. Former Federal Communications Commission commissioner Paul A. Porter joined the firm in 1947; in 1965, following the appointment of Fortas to the Supreme Court, the firm was renamed as Arnold & Porter. For many years, it has remained one of Washington's most influential law firms, and today is among the most profitable law firms in the world.

In the 1948 United States Senate election in Texas, Lyndon Johnson ran for the Democratic nomination for one of the two seats in the U.S. Senate from Texas. Johnson won the Democratic primary by only 87 votes. His opponent, former Governor of Texas Coke R. Stevenson, persuaded a federal judge to issue an order taking Johnson's name off the general election ballot while the primary results were being contested. There were serious allegations of corruption in the voting process, including 200 votes for Johnson that had been cast in alphabetical order. Johnson asked Fortas for help, and Fortas persuaded Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black to overturn the ruling. Johnson then won the general election and became a U.S. Senator.

During the Red Scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s, Fortas came to widespread notice as the defense attorney for Owen Lattimore. In 1950, Fortas often clashed with Senator Joseph McCarthy when representing Lattimore before the Tydings Committee, and also before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee.

Fortas initially opposed the creation of a presidential commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. When it became clear that multiple investigations were gearing up simultaneously at the city, state, and federal levels, Fortas changed his mind and advised Johnson to establish the Warren Commission.

Fortas was known in Washington circles to have a serious interest in psychiatry, still a controversial subject at the time. In 1953, this expertise led to his appointment to represent the indigent Monte W. Durham, whose insanity defense had been rejected at trial two years earlier, before a U.S. Court of Appeals.

Durham's defense had been denied because the District Court had applied the M'Naghten rules, requiring that the defense prove the accused did not know the difference between right and wrong for an insanity plea to be accepted. …

On July 28, 1965, President Johnson nominated Fortas as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, to succeed Arthur Goldberg, who had resigned to become the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations following the death of Adlai Stevenson. Johnson persuaded Goldberg to leave the Court for the U.N. in part because he wanted Fortas on the Court. Johnson thought that some of his "Great Society" reforms could be ruled unconstitutional by the Court and felt that Fortas would let him know if that was to happen. The nomination was given a favorable recommendation by the Senate Judiciary Committee two weeks later, following a one-day public hearing. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on August 11, 1965, and took the judicial oath of office on October 4, 1965. His appointment ensured the continuation of the Warren Court's liberal majority.

The seat Fortas occupied on the Court had come to be informally known as the "Jewish seat," as his three immediate predecessors—Goldberg, Felix Frankfurter and Benjamin Cardozo—were also Jewish.

Fortas continued to serve as an adviser to Johnson after becoming an associate justice. He attended White House staff meetings, advising the president on judicial nominations and discussing private Supreme Court deliberations with him. In 1966, he substantially edited an initial version of Johnson's State of the Union Address.

In 1968, Fortas wrote a book called Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobedience.

Fortas's law clerks included future Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Walter B. Slocombe and Martha A. Field, a scholar of constitutional law, family law, and bioethics.

In 1966, Justice Fortas informed the FBI and White House about the Fred B. Black, Jr. warrantless bugging case pending before the High Court. This included revealing conference room discussions, lobbying the justices in favor of the FBI position that this was Robert F. Kennedy's fault not J. Edgar Hoover's. This was done despite Fortas disqualifying himself from the case. The next year, Director Hoover both blackmailed and protected Justice Fortas after an allegation of sexual misconduct with a teenager. Fortas denied this allegation. Justice Fortas continued to rule on cases involving the FBI.

Fortas had mostly good working relations with his fellow justices, although they worried that he talked to President Johnson too much. …