In early 1943, Justice Felix Frankfurter invited his friend, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, to make a social visit to the Supreme Court of the United States. He invited her to see the Court’s new bust of the late Justice Louis D. Brandeis, who had been a special friend to Frankfurter, and to have a private lunch with Frankfurter and other justices.
Mrs. Roosevelt came to the Court on Wednesday, March 17, 1943. She had a relaxed luncheon with seven justices: Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone and Associate Justices Owen J. Roberts, Hugo L. Black, Stanley Reed, Frankfurter, Robert H. Jackson, and Wiley Rutledge. (Associate Justices William O. Douglas and Frank Murphy were absent.)
Unbeknownst to the First Lady, the Justices then—eight of whom had been nominated to the Court by President Franklin D. Roosevelt—were not always so happy together. In various cases, including a significant number about Jehovah’s Witnesses’ claimed constitutional rights to worship, speak, and proselytize, the justices were divided (including with Robert Jackson in something approaching the Court’s middle). Some, including Frankfurter and Jackson, thought that other justices were less than honest intellectually and sometimes unethical in their conduct. Jackson was, for some of these reasons, thinking in 1943 of quitting the Court, but he ultimately decided not to. Roberts also was disenchanted, and two years later he did quit.
But at lunch on March 17, the seven justices demonstrated, for the First Lady and maybe authentically, cordiality toward each other.
Hours later, she wrote, for her daily newspaper column (“My Day”) published the next day, that she
felt a little odd to be lunching with all these gentlemen, but they joked with each other in quite normal fashion. Though they often disagree on intellectual standpoints, they tell me that to an amazing degree they are able to make the distinction between intellectual disagreement and personal liking.
That is a good way to do public business.
(And here is a link to a 2023 Jackson List essay about Mrs. Roosevelt viewing the Brandeis bust: https://thejacksonlist.com/2023/03/17/march-17-monuments/.)
