Abe Fortas

Abraham Fortas (June 19, 1910 – April 5, 1982) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1965 to 1969.

Born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Fortas graduated from Rhodes College and Yale Law School.

He later became a law professor at Yale Law School and then an advisor for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Fortas attended South Side High School where, at the age of sixteen, he graduated second in his class in 1926.

After graduating from high school, Fortas won a scholarship to attend Southwestern at Memphis, a liberal arts college now called Rhodes College.

During his college years, Fortas supported himself by working as a shoe salesman and as a performing violinist, while also giving violin lessons to local children.

Initially, Fortas considered studying music, before settling on English and political science.

He graduated first in his class in 1930.

Fortas earned scholarships from both Harvard Law School and Yale Law School but ultimately decided to attend Yale, becoming the youngest law student there at 20 years old.

He became editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal and graduated cum laude and second in the class of 1933.

One of his professors, William O. Douglas, was impressed with Fortas, and Douglas arranged for Fortas to stay at Yale to become an assistant professor of law.

In 1935, Fortas married Carolyn E. Agger, who became a successful tax lawyer.

They had no children, and after his appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States, they lived at 3210 R Street NW in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C.

Just like his days in Memphis, Fortas was an amateur musician who played the violin in a string quartet, called the "N Street Strictly-no-refunds String Quartet" on Sunday evenings in Washington.

Fortas was friends with well-known musicians such as Rudolf Serkin, Isaac Stern and Pablo Casals.

Fortas was a good friend of the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín, calling him "a spectacularly great figure".

Fortas visited the island often, frequently lobbied for the island's interests in Congress, participated in drafting the Constitution of Puerto Rico, and gave legal advice to Marín's administration whenever requested.

Shortly thereafter, Douglas took on a series of government positions, including with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Washington, D.C. In 1937, he was made assistant director of the public utilities division at the SEC. Throughout this period, Fortas commuted between New Haven and Washington in order to fulfill his responsibilities both to Yale and to the government.

Leaving Yale in 1939, Fortas served as general counsel of the Public Works Administration and then as Undersecretary of the Interior in Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration.

While he was working at the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes, introduced him to a young congressman from Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson.

In October 1943, Fortas was granted a leave of absence from the Department of Interior to join the United States Navy for World War II.

Assigned to Naval Training Station Sampson, New York for his initial training, in December 1943 he was honorably discharged as the result of an arrested case of ocular tuberculosis that caused doctors to deem him medically unfit.

He had resigned from his position at the Interior department while in the navy, but was reappointed in January 1944.

Fortas worked at the Department of the Interior under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was appointed by President Harry S. Truman to delegations that helped set up the United Nations in 1945.

In 1945, he was appointed by President Harry S. Truman as an advisor to the U.S. delegation during the organizational meeting of the United Nations (UN) in San Francisco, and at the 1946 General Assembly meeting in London.

In 1948, Fortas represented Lyndon B. Johnson in the dispute over the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination, and he formed close ties with Johnson.

Fortas also represented Clarence Earl Gideon before the U.S. Supreme Court, in a landmark case involving the right to counsel.

Nominated by Johnson to the Supreme Court in 1965, Fortas was confirmed by the Senate, and maintained a close working relationship with the president.

As a justice, Fortas wrote several notable majority opinions including Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District.

In 1968, Johnson tried to elevate Fortas to the position of Chief Justice of the United States, but that nomination faced a filibuster and was withdrawn.

Fortas later resigned from the Court after a controversy involving his acceptance of $20,000 from financier Louis Wolfson while Wolfson was being investigated for insider trading.

The Justice Department investigated Fortas at the behest of President Richard Nixon, who saw replacing Fortas as a chance to move the Court in a more conservative direction.

Attorney General John N. Mitchell pressured Fortas into resigning.

Following his resignation, Fortas returned to private practice, occasionally appearing before the justices with whom he had served.

Fortas was born the youngest of five children to Orthodox Jewish immigrants Woolfe Fortas and Rachel "Ray" Berzansky Fortas in Memphis, Tennessee.

Woolfe was born in Russia, and Rachel was born in Lithuania.

Woolfe was a cabinetmaker, and the couple operated a store together.

Fortas acquired a lifelong love for music from his father, who encouraged his playing the violin, and was known in Memphis as "Fiddlin' Abe Fortas".

Fortas learned to play the violin from local Catholic nuns at the St. Patrick's School on Linden, a block from his house on Pontotoc Street; he then studied chamber music with the leader of a local trio.

The Puerto Rican actor José Ferrer portrayed Fortas in the film Gideon's Trumpet (1980).