CONSTITUTIONAL CALENDAR 19.1

We debut a new feature for 2019. Judge Milton Hirsch, jurist, polymath, constitutional raconteur, has an email he sends out on an irregular basis that he calls his Constitutional Calendar. After being bombarded with his emails forwarded to us last year by his fans, we secured the rights to re-post his missives, which we do without editing.  

At 7:00 in the evening of January 4, 1939, Prof. Felix Frankfurter was annoyed to have to take a phone call.  Frankfurter was in his underwear, trying to dress hurriedly to receive dinner guests who had already arrived and whom he was keeping waiting.

But the caller was President Roosevelt.  And to make matters worse, Roosevelt’s message seemed as unwelcome as his timing: Roosevelt went on at some length explaining why he didn’t think he could nominate Frankfurter to the open seat on the United States Supreme Court.  Frankfurter did his best to express his understanding and acceptance of Roosevelt’s position, and to terminate the call – his wife Marian kept shouting up the staircase, “Hurry up!  You are always late!”

Just as it seemed that the president was willing to hang up, however, he stated, “But wherever I turn, wherever I turn and to whomever I talk, I am made to realize that you are the only person fit to succeed Holmes and Cardozo.  Unless you give me an insurmountable objection I’m going to send your name in for the Court tomorrow at twelve o’clock.”

Stunned, Frankfurter whispered in a voice so low that Roosevelt wasn’t sure he was intended to hear it, “I wish only that my mother were still alive.”