Felix Frankfurter, 1939-1962

FELIX FRANKFURTER was born in Vienna, Austria, on November 15, 1882. When he was twelve years old, his family emigrated to the United States and settled in New York, New York. Frankfurter was graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1902 and Harvard Law School in 1906. Upon graduation, he took a position with a New York law firm, but within the year he was appointed an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. In 1910, Frankfurter began four years of service in the War Department’s Bureau of Insular Affairs as a legal officer. In 1914, he accepted an appointment to the faculty of Harvard Law School. He returned to Washington in 1917 to become assistant to the Secretary of War. He later became Secretary and counsel to the President’s Mediation Commission and, subsequently, Chairman of the War Labor Policies Board. After World War I he rejoined the Harvard Law School faculty. President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated Frankfurter to the Supreme Court of the United States on January 5, 1939, and the Senate confirmed the appointment on January 17, 1939. After twenty-three years of service, Frankfurter retired from the Supreme Court on August 28, 1962. He died on February 22, 1965, at the age of eighty-two.