Felix Frankfurter, Collector of People

Felix Frankfurter engaged, intensely, with people—they were the treasures that he hunted down, evaluated, and collected. This essay, written on the great occasion of Brad Snyder’s Frankfurter biography, considers some of Frankfurter’s most treasured people. One group is people who made Frankfurter, including Frankfurter himself, Henry L. Stimson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Another group is Justice Frankfurter’s three great U.S. Supreme Court colleagues: Justices Hugo L. Black, Robert H. Jackson, and William O. Douglas.

A third group is biographers who Frankfurter admired and pushed: Harlan Buddington Phillips, Mark DeWolfe Howe, Jr., McGeorge Bundy, Alexander Bickel, Andrew L. Kaufman, and Philip B. Kurland. Brad Snyder has, by himself collecting Frankfurter and portraying him so fully and so well, brought his people-collecting into focus. I hope that Snyder’s biography stimulates others to study. Frankfurter, to recover his stolen papers, to write more about him, to publish more of his writings, and to live people-filled lives like his.