Jerome Frank (lawyer)

Jerome New Frank
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair
In office 1939–1941
Preceded by	William O. Douglas
Succeeded by	Edward C. Eicher
Personal details
Born	(1889-09-10)September 10, 1889 New York City
Died	January 13, 1957(1957-01-13) (aged 67) New Haven, CT
Alma mater	University of Chicago

Jerome New Frank (September 10, 1889 – January 13, 1957) was a legal philosopher who played a leading role in the legal realism movement and a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Frank was born in New York City. He received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1909 and obtained his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1912. He worked as a lawyer in private practice in Chicago from 1912 to 1930, and in New York City from 1930 to 1933.

During the New Deal administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Frank served as general counsel of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration from 1933 to 1935, when he was purged along with young leftist lawyers in his office. Roosevelt approved the purge but made Frank a special counsel to the Reconstruction Finance Association in 1935. In 1937, President Roosevelt named Frank as a commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Frank served as an SEC commissioner from 1937 to 1941, including as Chairman from 1939 to 1941.

In February 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt named Frank as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He was confirmed by the Senate in March 1941. Frank was considered a highly competent judge, often taking what was perceived as the more liberal position on civil liberties issues. He served as an active judge on the court until his death in 1957.

Frank's extensive personal and judicial papers are archived at Yale University and are mostly open to researchers.

He died of a heart attack in New Haven.

Works

Frank published many influential books, including Law and the Modern Mind (1930), which argues for ‘legal realism’ and emphasizes the psychological forces at work in legal matters. His other major work, Courts on Trial (1949), stressed the uncertainties and fallibility of the judicial process. In 1965, his daughter Barbara Frank Kristein published A Man's Reach: The Selected Writings of Judge Jerome Frank, with a foreword by William O. Douglas and an introduction by Edmond Cahn of New York University School of Law.

See also

• Legal realism

Further reading

• Neil Duxbury 1991: "Jerome Frank and the Legacy of Legal Realism", in Journal of Law and Society, Vol.18, No.2 (Summer 1991), pp. 175–205.
• Glennon, Robert Jerome. The Iconoclast as Reformer: Jerome Frank's Impact on American Law. Cornell U. Press, 1985. 252 pp.

Government offices
Preceded by William O. Douglas	Securities and Exchange Commission Chair 1939-1941	Succeeded by Edward C. Eicher