Abraham Fortas (June 19, 1910 - April 5, 1982) was a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice. He served in that role from October 4, 1965 until May 14, 1969, when he resigned under pressure.

Fortas was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He was the youngest of five children. His father, a native of England, was an Orthodox Jew who worked as a cabinetmaker. Abe Fortas acquired a life-long love for music from his father, who encouraged his playing the violin, and was known in Memphis as "Fiddlin' Abe Fortas". He attended public schools in Memphis, and graduated from Southwestern (later known as Rhodes College) in 1930.

Fortas left Memphis to enroll in Yale Law School. He graduated second in his class in 1933 and was Editor in Chief of the Yale Law Journal. One of his professors, William O. Douglas, was impressed with Fortas and arranged for him to stay at Yale and become an assistant professor.

Shortly thereafter, Douglas left Yale to run the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Washington, DC. Fortas commuted between New Haven and Washington both teaching at Yale and advising the SEC.

After leaving government service, Fortas started the firm Arnold, Fortas & Porter. It became one of Washington's most influential law firms.

In 1948, Lyndon Johnson ran for the Democratic nomination for one of Texas' seats in the US Senate. He won the primary by only 87 votes. His opponent convinced a federal judge to issue an order taking Johnson's name off of the general election ballot while the primary results were being contested; there were serious allegations of corruption in the voting process, including 200 Johnson votes that had been cast in alphabetical order. Johnson asked Fortas for help, and Fortas persuaded a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Hugo Black, to overturn the ruling. Johnson became a U.S. Senator, winning the general election.

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson, now President, persuaded Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg to resign his seat to become Ambassador to the United Nations. He then appointed his longtime friend, Abe Fortas, to the court. On the Court, Fortas was a reliable liberal, authoring the notable opinion in 1969's Tinker v. Des Moines School District accepting the rights of schoolchildren to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. His effort to overturn public drunkenness laws failed, however, as the Court upheld such laws in 1968's Powell v. Texas.

When Chief Justice Earl Warren announced his retirement in June 1968, Johnson nominated Fortas to replace Warren as Chief Justice. However, Fortas' strongly liberal opinions from the bench had angered many conservative members of the United States Senate. Fortas' nomination provided the first opportunity for those forces in American society angered by the far-reaching Constitutional interpretations of the Warren Court on issues of race, speech, religion and defendent's rights to register their disenchantment with the direction of the Court. This backlash would grow in the coming years. The nomination resulted in a five day filibuster led by Republicans and conservative southern Democrats ("Dixiecrats"). A cloture motion to end the filibuster failed. At that time, 59 votes were needed to stop debate. The vote was 45-43, with 10 Republicans and 35 Democrats voting for cloture and 24 Republicans and 19 Democrats voting against cloture. The 12 other Senators, all Democrats, were not present. Fortas then withdrew his name from consideration. The next president, Richard Nixon, a Republican, appointed Warren E. Burger as Chief Justice.

Fortas' reputation had been damaged by the failure of his nomination, and his ideological antagonists in the Senate continued the assault in 1969 under the new administration. Fortas had accepted a $20,000 retainer from the family foundation of Wall Street financier Louis Wolfson, a long-time friend and client, in January 1966. Wolfson was convicted of violating Federal securities laws later that year and Fortas returned the retainer. When Chief Justice Earl Warren was informed of the incident by the new Attorney General John N. Mitchell, he persuaded Fortas to resign to avoid the negative publicity for himself and the Court of a threatened impeachment by his enemies in the Senate. President Nixon appointed as his replacement Harry A. Blackmun.

Fortas was the author of Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobedience.

In 1939, he married Carolyn E. Agger, a successful tax lawyer. They had no children.


(from wikipedia.org)

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