Professor Felix Frankfurter Appointed Judge of Supreme Court of Massachusetts

Professor Felix Frankfurter, Professor of Law at Harvard University from 1914-1920, and Professor of Administrative Law at Harvard University since 1920, has to-day been appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts.

Professor Felix Frankfurter, who was born in Vienna, and will celebrate his 50th, birthday on November 15th., is a prominent Zionist, who was very active in American Zionism during the Brandeis leadership. He was a member of the Zionist delegation to the Peace Conference in 1919, when King Feisal of the Hedjaz, who headed the Hedjaz delegation, addressed to him the famous Frankfurter letter, expressing “the deepest sympathy in the Zionist movement”. The letter played an important part during the proceedings of the Shaw Commission of Inquiry, after the Palestine riots of 1929.

Recently Professor Frankfurter has again been taking an active part in Zionist affairs, and he was associated with Mr. Emanuel Neuman, member of the Jewish Agency Executive, in the movement which has resulted in the formation of the American-Palestine Committee of members of the United States Congress and Senate, at the Washington meeting held in January.

Professor Frankfurter, in his address on that occasion, said that he brought a message from Justice Louis D. Brandeis, whose indisposition prevented his attendance. Approval of the establishment of a National Jewish Home in Palestine was embodied, he said, in the foreign policy of the United States in the International Treaty known as the Palestine Convention of December 3rd., 1924, between the United States and Great Britain, formally recognising the Palestine Mandate where in the Jewish National Home provisions are contained. The Mandate, he went on, explicitly recited the Balfour Declaration and charted the Mandatory with putting it into effect. Thus was the Balfour Declaration made part of the law of nations, and thereby the establishment of a Jewish National Home became an international obligation, since non-Jews also dwelt in Palestine and Jews dwelt also in other lands.

Discussing the obligations of Great Britain under the Mandate, Professor Frankfurter declared: If words have meaning, if a purpose clearly expressed is not a sham, then the obligation of Great Britain under the Palestine Mandate is to exert her active undeavours toward the promotion of those economic, social and cultural forces which in their combined manifestations, constitute what we call a Nation. A Nation means people, and land on which to toil and live. A National Home for the Jewish people in Palestine implies something wholly different from individual and isolated Jews living as they have lived or might live in Poland or Roumania, Land, the Jews may own in other countries; industries, they may acquire in other lands; but an integrated national life-a well founded civilised society-is the very essence of the Palestinian Home”.

When Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes retired from the United States Supreme Court, his place being filled in February by Mr. Justice Cardoza, so that with Mr. Justice Brandeis there are now two Jewish judges in the Supreme Court, Professor Frankfurter was also mentioned as a likely candidate. Judge Holmes himself was stated to have suggested to Governor Ely of Massachusetts that Professor Frankfurter should succeed him. Judge Holmes described Professor Frankfurter as one of the ablest and most profound members of the legal profession in the American nation.