Abe Fortas resigns from the U.S. Supreme Court - May 15th, 1969

On this day in 1969, Justice Abe Fortas stepped down from the Supreme Court due to his involvement in a financial scandal.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that pulls down the pants of history because it
knows what it did. I'm Gabeluesier, and today we're looking

(00:22):
at the story of the first and so far only
Supreme Court justice to resign under threat of impeachment. The
day was May fifteenth, nineteen sixty nine. Justice Abe Fortas

(00:44):
stepped down from the Supreme Court due to his involvement
in a financial scandal. Fortis insisted he had done nothing
wrong and that he was only resigning to help preserve
public trust in the Court. That said, another motivating factor
may have its been that Fortis, a liberal judge, was
at risk of being impeached by the Democrat controlled House,

(01:06):
with even his own party turning against him, Taking the
high road of resignation probably felt like the best option
he had left. Abraham Fortas was born on June nineteenth,
nineteen ten, in Memphis, Tennessee. He graduated from Southwestern College
now Rhodes College in nineteen thirty and then studied law

(01:27):
at Yale for the next four years. He graduated second
in his class in nineteen thirty three and was promptly
hired to stay on at Yale as an assistant professor
of law. Soon after, Fords took on a series of
government roles in Washington, d c. Including with the Agricultural
Adjustment Administration and the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

(01:48):
During that time, he also struck up a friendship with
a young congressman from Texas named Lyndon B. Johnson. The
two would keep in touch throughout the nineteen forties and fifties,
and when Johnson became president in the mid nineteen sixties,
he brought his old friend Fortis along for the ride.
By that point, Abe Fortas had made quite a name

(02:09):
for himself in Washington, where he had co founded one
of the most prestigious corporate law firms in the country,
Arnold Fortis and Porter. The firm made most of its
money by repping large corporations, but Fortis had also distinguished
himself in several key First Amendment cases where he successfully
argued in favor of the rights of the individual. It

(02:31):
was on the strength of that work, and on their
long running friendship, that President Johnson appointed Fortis to be
an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Arthur Goldberg
had resigned his seat earlier that year to serve as
an ambassador to the United Nations. The Senate confirmed Fortis
as his replacement in August of nineteen sixty five, and

(02:52):
just three years after that, another vacancy opened on the court.
Chief Justice Earl Warren decided to retire and nonineteen sixty eight,
and President Johnson wanted Fords to succeed him. In order
for the nomination to go through, however, the Senate would
have to approve Fordace's elevation to Chief Justice, and winning
that approval proved trickier than expected. The close friendship between

(03:17):
Justice Fortis and LBJ was well known by nineteen sixty eight,
but his second confirmation hearings gave the public its first
glimpse at the true scope of that relationship. According to
the Senate, the proceedings revealed that as a sitting Justice,
Fortis regularly attended White House staff meetings. He briefed the

(03:37):
President on secret court deliberations, and on behalf of the President,
he pressured senators who opposed the war in Vietnam. Many
senators had misgivings about Fortis's involvement in White House affairs,
but the confirmation hearings actually dredged up something even more damning.
It was revealed that one of Fordyce's former law partners,

(03:59):
Paul Porter, had been paying him to teach summer school
classes at American University. Moonlighting as a law professor wouldn't
have been a huge issue on its own, except that
Fordis wasn't on American University's payroll. Instead, his summer school
salary was paid by former clients of his old partner's
law firm, and if that wasn't suspicious enough, many of

(04:22):
those clients had cases potentially bound for the Supreme Court,
where Fortis would theoretically pass judgment on them. The payments
in question was fifteen thousand dollars or more than one
hundred and thirty thousand dollars in today's money, and it
represented roughly forty percent of the annual salary Fortis earned
as a Supreme Court justice. Many conservative senators raised concerns

(04:47):
over his financial dealings, and when they effectively blocked his
confirmation with a filibuster, Fortis asked the President to withdraw
his name, making him the first nominee for Chief Justice
since seventeen ninety five to fail to win Senate approval.
Unfortunately for Fordis, things were about to go from bad
to worse. In nineteen sixty nine, Life magazine broke the

(05:10):
news on another suspicious business deal involving the Justice. It
turned out that three years earlier he had taken a
secret retainer from the family foundation of Lewis Wolfson, a
Wall Street financier and a former client of Fordis. While
sitting on the court, the Justice accepted twenty thousand dollars
in exchange for his consultation on unspecified legal matters. Per

(05:34):
the terms of their agreement, Fordas would then receive an
additional twenty thousand dollars every year for the rest of
his life. In the end, Fordas accepted just the one payment,
and even that one he didn't keep for very long.
In fact, he returned the money and quit the foundation
before the year was even out. That proved to be
a wise decision, too, as not long after Lewis Wolfson

(05:57):
was convicted and imprisoned for seeing securities fraud. Life Magazine's
disclosure of the Wolfson retainer marked the beginning of the
end of Fortis's brief judicial career. Republicans in Congress demanded
that he resign, and pretty soon Democrats called for his
ouster as well. To be clear, what Fordis had done

(06:18):
was not technically illegal, but it sure didn't seem like
becoming conduct for Supreme Court justice. The appearance of financial
impropriety was so alarming the Chief Justice Warren and Fortis's friend,
Justice HUGO. Black both urged him to resign, not only
for the sake of his own reputation, but for that
of his wife, Caroline Ager, who was also a prominent lawyer.

(06:41):
In the end, Fortis begrudgingly took their Advice President Richard
Nixon happily accepted his resignation on the morning of May fifteenth,
nineteen sixty nine. It later came to light that Nixon's
administration had conspired to force Fortis off the Court, even
going so far as to leak incriminating info to Life magazine.

(07:03):
That shady effort ultimately paid off, allowing Nixon to fill
Fordace's seat with his own Conservative appointment, Justice Harry Blackman.
As for Abe Fortas, he started a new law firm
and returned to private practice, his reputation and his career
were never quite the same. But if his resignation letter
is to be believed, then Fortis never doubted his decision.

(07:26):
As he put it himself, quote, the welfare and the
maximum effectiveness of the Court to perform its critical role
in our system of government are factors that are paramount
to all others. Whatever you think of justice, Abe Fortis,
there's no denying that when push came to shove, he
did the right thing for the country. He didn't make

(07:46):
excuses or threaten payback or play the victim. He heard
the many calls for his resignation, both from Congress and
from the public, and though he didn't think he deserved them,
he heeded them all the same. To do otherwise would
have only brought further embarrassment on himself and on the court.
Abe Fortis was a decent enough public servant that he

(08:08):
wasn't willing to do that. So, although his time on
the bench provided many examples of what not to do,
his departure from the court is a sterling example of
how a justice should respond when their impartiality as a
jurist is in doubt. You likely don't need me to
spell out all the similarities between this story and current events,

(08:29):
and I think it's far more striking anyway to note
the differences. I'm Gabe Luzier and hopefully you now know
a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
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(08:51):
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Thanks to Chandler May's and Ben Hackett for producing the show,
and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here
again tomorrow for another day in history class.