FORTAS, ABE
Abe Fortas served as a justice of the U.S.
Supreme Court from 1965 to 1969. A renowned
and powerful Washington, D.C., attorney before
he joined the Court, Fortas resigned from the
bench in disgrace after allegations of unethical
behavior led to calls for his IMPEACHMENT.
Fortas was born June 19, 1910, in Memphis,
to English immigrant Jews. He graduated from
Southwestern College, in Memphis, in 1930 and
received a law degree from Yale Law School in
1933. An outstanding student at Yale, Fortas
became a protege of WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS,a
member of the school’s faculty and a future
Supreme Court justice. Following graduation
Fortas divided his time between Yale and Wash-
ington, D.C., serving as an assistant professor at
the school and working in several federal gov-
ernment agencies.
Fortas’s arrival in Washington, D.C., coin-
cided with President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT’s
NEW DEAL administration. Under Roosevelt the
federal government greatly expanded as it
assumed more regulatory power over the
national economy. Fortas severed his connec-
tions with Yale in 1937 and went to work full-
time for the SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE
COMMISSION, which was chaired by Douglas.
Fortas proved to be an effective administra-
tor. He joined the DEPARTMENT OF THE INTE-
RIOR in 1939 and soon became a confidant of
Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. Ickes, a
powerful member of the Roosevelt administra-
tion, named Fortas undersecretary in 1942. For-
tas served in that position until 1946, when he
left government to start a private law firm.
Fortas and Thurman W. Arnold, a former
law professor and chief of the Antitrust Division
of the JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, created the firm of
Arnold and Porter to help corporations and
other powerful interest groups deal with the new
federal bureaucracy. Fortas knew his way around
the halls of power and became an influential
lobbyist and interpreter of government regula-
tions in post-World War II Washington, D.C.
His path to the Supreme Court began in
1948, when he led the legal team that fought to
place Lyndon B. Johnson’s name on the Texas
election ballot for U.S. senator. Johnson, a Texas
congressman in the 1940s, got to know Fortas
while Fortas was at the Department of the Inte-
rior. The 1948 Texas Democratic primary elec-
tion gave Johnson an 87-vote margin of victory,
but his opponent, Coke R. Stevenson, alleged
that Johnson’s supporters had stuffed the ballot
box with phony ballots. After Stevenson filed
suit in federal court, a judge removed Johnson’s
name from the final election ballot, pending an
investigation into the alleged election irregulari-
ties. Fortas convinced Justice HUGO L. BLACK of
the Supreme Court to order the restoration of
Johnson’s name, pursuant to Black’s judicial
power to review the actions of the federal courts
in Texas. Johnson was elected to the Senate and
became majority leader in 1955. He was elected
vice president of the United States in 1960 and
became president on November 22, 1963, fol-
