Abraham Fortas (June 19, 1910 – April 5, 1982) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1965 to 1969.

As a justice, Fortas wrote several landmark opinions in cases such as In re Gault and Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District.

During his college years, Fortas supported himself by working as a shoe salesman and as a performing violinist, while also giving violin lessons to local children.

[7] They had no children, and after his appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States, they lived at 3210 R Street NW in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C.[3][page needed][8] Just like his days in Memphis, Fortas was an amateur musician who played the violin in a string quartet, called the "N Street Strictly-no-refunds String Quartet" on Sunday evenings in Washington.

[3][9] Fortas was a good friend of the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín, calling him "a spectacularly great figure".

In October 1943, Fortas was granted a leave of absence from the Department of Interior to enlist in the United States Navy for World War II.

His opponent, former Governor of Texas Coke R. Stevenson, persuaded a federal judge to issue an order taking Johnson's name off the general election ballot while the primary results were being contested.

[15] When it became clear that multiple investigations were gearing up simultaneously at the city, state, and federal levels, Fortas changed his mind and advised Johnson to establish the Warren Commission.

In 1953, this expertise led to his appointment to represent the indigent Monte W. Durham, whose insanity defense had been rejected at trial two years earlier, before a U.S. Court of Appeals.

Adopted by the British House of Lords in 1843, generations before the origins of modern psychiatry, this test was still in common use in American courts over a century later.

In a critical turning point for American criminal law, the Court of Appeals accepted Fortas's call to abandon the M'Naghten Rule and to allow for testimony and evidence regarding the defendant's mental state.

[21] On July 28, 1965, President Johnson nominated Fortas as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court,[22] to succeed Arthur Goldberg, who had resigned to become the U.S.

[26] He attended White House staff meetings, advising the president on judicial nominations and discussing private Supreme Court deliberations with him.

[29] Fortas's law clerks included future Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Walter B. Slocombe[3][page needed] and Martha A.

This included revealing conference room discussions, lobbying the justices in favor of the FBI position that this was Robert F. Kennedy's fault not J. Edgar Hoover's.

[3][page needed] Fortas called fellow associate justice John Marshall Harlan II "one of my dearest friends, although we usually are on opposite sides of the issues here.

Justice Black took the strict constructionist view that the U.S. Constitution does not dictate how a state must choose its governor: "Our business is not to write the laws to fit the day.

"[35]Fortas was critical of justices (he specifically cited Thurgood Marshall) who frequently broke into attorneys' arguments to ask questions.

The case concerned a 15-year-old who had been sentenced to almost six years (until his 21st birthday) in the Arizona State Industrial School for making an obscene phone call to his neighbor.

Although the Court agreed quickly after hearing the case that the Arkansas ruling should be reversed, there was no consensus as to why, most Justices favoring fairly narrow grounds.

Fortas was the architect and the author of the broader landmark majority opinion that emerged in Epperson v. Arkansas, banning religiously based creation narratives from public school science curricula.

He wrote: "The enormous growth of presidential power from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson was a necessary and an inevitable adaptation of our constitutional system to national needs.

"[3][page needed] On June 26, 1968, Johnson nominated Fortas as Chief Justice of the United States,[22] to succeed Earl Warren, who had submitted his resignation effective with the confirmation of a successor.

[38] The propriety of the coordinated resignation-nomination on the eve of the November presidential election was called into question by Republican candidate Richard Nixon and the media.

"[39] The National Socialist White People's Party undertook a phone campaign that summer, condemning Fortas as a "despicable Jew with a 'red' record that smells to high heaven".

Even so, the White House began alerting the press to growing antisemitic opposition against Fortas, and used the issue to garner support for him in the Senate.

[41] During the hearing preparations, it was revealed that Fortas had accepted $15,000 ($131,426 in 2023) raised by private donors to teach nine summer seminars at American University's Washington College of Law during his tenure as a justice.

Fortas had accepted a US $20,000 (equivalent to $166,000 in 2023)[48] retainer from the family foundation of Wall Street financier Louis Wolfson, a friend and former client, in January 1966.

Nixon was unsure if an investigation or prosecution was legal, but was convinced by then-Assistant Attorney General and future Chief Justice William Rehnquist that it would be.

The Washington Post subsequently published several excerpts, including language suggesting that Fortas might have indeed spoken with President Johnson about a pardon for Wolfson, but there was no direct evidence that it was a quid pro quo rather than a voluntary intervention for a friend.