Felix Frankfurter: Court

“There is torture of mind as well as body; the will is as much affected by fear as by force. And there comes a point where this Court should not be ignorant as judges of what we know as men.”

Felix Frankfurter

Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49, 52 (1949).
Judicial opinions

Men , Fear

“As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.”

Felix Frankfurter

News summaries (August 9, 1964).
Other writings

“What becomes decisive to a Justice's functioning on the Court in the large area within which his individuality moves is his general attitude toward law, the habits of the mind that he has formed or is capable of unforming, his capacity for detachment, his temperament or training for putting his passion behind his judgment instead of in front of it. The attitudes and qualities which I am groping to characterize are ingredients of what compendiously might be called dominating humility.”

Felix Frankfurter

Foreward, to "Memorial issue for Robert H. Jackson", 55 Columbia Law Review (April, 1955) p. 436; quoted by United States Senator Howell Heflin during the confirmation debate for Justice David Souter, on September 24, 1990, S13540.
Other writings

Justice , Law , Decision , Passion

“In this Court dissents have gradually become majority opinions.”

Felix Frankfurter

Concurring, Graves v. New York ex rel. O'Keefe, 306 U.S. 446 (1939).
Judicial opinions

“Decisions of this Court do not have intrinsic authority.”

Felix Frankfurter

Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46, 59 (1947).
Judicial opinions

Decision

“No court can make time stand still.”

Felix Frankfurter

Writing for the court, Scripps-Howard Radio, Inc. v. FCC, 316 U.S. 4 (1942).
Judicial opinions

Time

“It is true of opinions as of other compositions that those who are seeped in them, whose ears are sensitive to literary nuances, whose antennae record subtle silences, can gather from their contents meaning beyond the words. All this presupposes, of course, a grasp of the nature of the Supreme Court's functions — the scope and limits of its constitutional authority — and often, as well, familiarity with the record and briefs of a particular case whose opinion record and briefs of a particular case whose opinion is under scrutiny.”

Felix Frankfurter

"'The Administrative Side' of Chief Justice Hughes", 63 Harvard Law Review 1, 2 (1949).
Other writings

Nature , Silence

“A court which yields to the popular will thereby licenses itself to practice despotism, for there can be no assurance that it will not on another occasion indulge its own will.”

Felix Frankfurter

Concurring, American Federation of Labor v. American Sash & Door Co., 335 U.S. 538, 557 (1949).
Judicial opinions

“One is entitled to say without qualification that the correlation between prior judicial experience and fitness for the Supreme Court is zero.”

Felix Frankfurter

"The Supreme Court in the Mirror of Justice," University of Pennsylvania Law Review (April, 1957), p. 786.
Other writings

“The course of decision in this Court has thus far jealously enforced the principle of a free society secured by the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. Its safeguards are not to be worn away by a process of devitalizing interpretation.”

Felix Frankfurter

Davis v. United States, 328 U.S. 582, 597 (1946).
Judicial opinions

Search , Decision