Felix Frankfurter

Frankfurter arrived in New York at twelve, speaking no English, settled with his family on the Lower East Side, and attended P.S. 25 and the City College of New York before going on to Harvard Law School, where he graduated first in his class in 1906. He worked under U.S. Attorney Henry Stimson, joined the Harvard Law faculty in 1914, and became one of the most influential legal advisers of the Roosevelt era. Roosevelt named him to the Supreme Court in 1939, where he served until 1962. His doctrine of judicial restraint — the view that judges should defer broadly to elected branches — disappointed many of the liberals who had supported his appointment, particularly in civil rights cases. He helped found the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920 and the New Republic earlier.