Fortas, Abe

Lawyer, judge; interviewee b. 1910; d. 1982.

Abe Fortas was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1910. He received his undergraduate degree from Southwestern College at Memphis in 1930, and his law degree from the Yale Law School in 1933. Fortas taught at Yale from 1933 until 1938, and served concurrently in a series of New Deal positions. He continued in government service from 1938 to 1946, rising to the rank of under secretary of the Interior under Harold L. Ickes. In his final months as under secretary, Fortas represented the United States at the formative United Nations conferences. In 1946, Fortas and Thurman W. Arnold co-founded a law firm that quickly gained a reputation for itself through its representation of large corporations as well as its defense of those brought before government loyalty boards. Fortas personally gained a reputation as one of America's leading attorneys, culminating in his appointment to an array of governmental advisory boards, corporate and artistic boards of directors, and as counsel in the landmark 1963 case of Gideon v. Wainright. In 1965, Fortas was appointed associate justice of the Supreme Court by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, for whom Fortas served as an advisor. He was nominated to be chief justice of the United States in 1968 in the final months of the Johnson administration, but, in the face of strong opposition, asked that his name be withdrawn. He then resigned from the Supreme Court in 1969, returning to private legal practice. Abe Fortas died in 1982.

Lawyer, judge; interviewee b. 1910, d. 1982.