Hugo Lafayette Black (February 27, 1886 -- September 25, 1971) was an American politician and jurist. A member of the Democratic Party, Black represented Alabama in the United States Senate from 1927 to 1937, and served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1937 to 1971. Black was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 63 to 16. (6 Democratic Senators and 10 Republican Senators voted against him.) He was first of nine Roosevelt nominees to the Court, and outlasted all except for William O. Douglas. Black is widely regarded as one of the most influential Supreme Court justices in the 20th century. The fifth longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history, Black is noted for his advocacy of a textualist reading of the United States Constitution and of the position that the liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights were imposed on the states ("incorporated") by the Fourteenth Amendment. During his political career, Black was regarded as a staunch supporter of liberal policies and civil liberties. However, Black consistently opposed the doctrine of substantive due process (the anti-New Deal Supreme Court cited this concept in such a way as to make it impossible for the government to enact legislation that interfered with the freedom of business owners) and believed that there was no basis in the words of the Constitution for a right to privacy, voting against finding one in Griswold v. Connecticut. Black endorsed Roosevelt in both the 1932 and 1936 US Presidential elections and was a staunch supporter of the New Deal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Black Felix Frankfurter (November 15, 1882 -- February 22, 1965) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Frankfurter was born in Vienna and immigrated to New York at the age of 12. He graduated from Harvard Law School and was active politically, helping to found the American Civil Liberties Union. He was a friend and adviser of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1939. Frankfurter served on the Supreme Court for 23 years, and was a noted advocate of judicial restraint in the judgments of the Court. Following the death of Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo in July 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked his old friend Frankfurter for recommendations of prospective candidates for the vacancy. Finding none on the list to suit his criteria, Roosevelt nominated Frankfurter himself, and he was confirmed without dissent.[34] The Senate confirmation hearing on the nomination of Frankfurter is notable for being the first time that a nominee for the Supreme Court appeared in person before the Judiciary Committee.[35] He served from January 30, 1939 to August 28, 1962. He wrote 247 opinions for the Court, 132 concurring opinions, and 251 dissents.[36] Frankfurter became the court's most outspoken advocate of judicial restraint, the view that courts should not interpret the fundamental law, the constitution, in such a way as to impose sharp limits upon the authority of the legislative and executive branches.[37] He also usually refused to apply the federal Constitution to the states.[38] In the case of Irvin v. Dowd, Frankfurter would state what was for him a frequent theme: "The federal judiciary has no power to sit in judgment upon a determination of a state court... Something that thus goes to the very structure of our federal system in its distribution of power between the United States and the state is not a mere bit of red tape to be cut, on the assumption that this Court has general discretion to see justice done...".[39] In his judicial restraint philosophy, Frankfurter was heavily influenced by his close friend and mentor Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who had taken a firm stand during his tenure on the bench against the doctrine of "economic due process". Frankfurter revered Justice Holmes, often citing Holmes in his opinions. In practice, this meant Frankfurter was generally willing to uphold the actions of those branches against constitutional challenges so long as they did not "shock the conscience." Frankfurter was particularly well known as a scholar of civil procedure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Frankfurter

• published: 17 Feb 2014
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