Abe Fortas

Abraham Fortas lived from June 19, 1910 to April 5, 1982 and 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, he graduated from Rhodes College and Yale Law School, became a Yale law professor and an adviser to the Securities and Exchange Commission, worked at the Interior Department under Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was appointed by Harry S. Truman to delegations helping establish the United Nations in 1945. In 1948 Fortas represented Lyndon B. Johnson in a disputed Senate primary and formed close ties with him, and he also represented Clarence Earl Gideon before the Supreme Court in Gideon v. Wainwright, the landmark right-to-counsel case. Nominated by Johnson to the Supreme Court in 1965, Fortas wrote landmark opinions including In re Gault and Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. In 1968 Johnson tried to elevate him to chief justice, but the nomination faced a filibuster and was withdrawn. Fortas resigned from the Court in 1969 after controversy over his acceptance of twenty thousand dollars from financier Louis Wolfson, who was under investigation for insider trading, and returned to private legal practice.