Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment.

• Date: 01 July 2023
• Author: Ingber, Jonathan S.

Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment

by Brad Snyder

Reviewed by Jonathan S. Ingber

"Mr. Ingber, are you sure?" To the client's plaintive query, my father, a New York counsellor at law, would invariably reply: "The Supreme Court splits five to four, and you are asking me if I am sure."

And so began a more than half-century fascination with constitutional law. The interest was stimulated considerably by a yearlong course on the subject with Prof. Robert McKay, an erudite Midwest-erner, at NYU School of Law in the fall of 1965. During that Paleolithic period, my heroes were Chief Justice Warren and Associate Justices Black and Douglas. More recently, however, with a comprehensive study of statutory interpretation, spurred by the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Bostock, Zarda, and Harris Funeral Homes ("because of...sex"--employment discrimination), my understanding of the judicial interpretative function underwent a semi-radical change. That change was stimulated by the collaboration of Associate Justice Scalia and Bryan Garner...