Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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Felix Frankfurter - A Biography ' . r BY ig. :il HAROLD J. LASKI 3 Professor of Political Science i ' F' University of London t 'F ELIX F RANKFURTER was born in Vienna fifty-seven years ago, and came to the United States when he was twelve years of age. He gradu- ated from the City College of New York in 1902, and from the Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Law Review, in 1906. After a brief period with a New York law firm, he became Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1907, under Mr. H. L. Stimsong in that capacity, he played a leading part in the prosecution of Morse and those concerned in the well-known Sugar Fraud cases of that epoch. When Mr. Stimson became Secretary of War, under President Taft, Mr. Frankfurter accom- panied him to Washington in the capacity of legal adviser to the Department. In 19141 he was offered, and accepted, a professorship at the Harvard Law School. There he remained, save for the years 1917-19, until his appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States in January, 1939. Mr. Frankfurter's war record was notable. At first, he was assistant to Mr. Newton D. Baker, the Secretary of War, and in that capacity he was entrusted by President Wilson with a diplomatic mission to Europe of great importance and delicacy. In 1918, President Wilson transferred him to the chairmanship of the newly created War 'Labor Policies Board, as its chairman he was responsible for framing the principles underlying labor conditions throughout the United States in the war. He acted also as counsel for the President's Industrial Mediation Com- mission of 1918, of which Mr. W. B. Wilson, then Secretary of Labor, was chairman. E91