Today in Supreme Court History: November 15, 1882

11/15/1882: Justice Felix Frankfurter's birthday.

Justice Felix Frankfurter

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

The hope was that he would become a liberal vote, but he ended up being anything but.

In law school I was struck by how often he was quoted and how often his ideas were incorrect or unworkable. (For example his “outcome-determinative” test for the Erie doctrine. Anyone past the first year of law school knows immediately that it would force federal courts in diversity cases to adopt state court procedures down to the minutest detail). Then I found that he had taught at Harvard Law School for 25 years and therefore had to be quoted.