Private Practice
After leaving government service, Fortas founded a law firm with Thurman Arnold in 1946, then known as Arnold & Fortas. Former FCC commissioner Paul A. Porter joined the firm in 1947, and after Fortas's ascension to the Supreme Court the firm dropped his name and is now known as Arnold & Porter. For many years, it has been one of Washington's most influential law firms, and today is among the largest law firms in the world.
In 1948, Lyndon Johnson ran for the Democratic nomination for one of Texas' seats in the U.S. Senate. He won the primary by only 87 votes. His opponent, former Texas governor Coke R. Stevenson, convinced a federal judge to issue an order taking Johnson's name off of the general election ballot while the primary results were being contested; there were serious allegations of corruption in the voting process, including 200 Johnson votes that had been cast in alphabetical order. Johnson asked Fortas for help, and Fortas persuaded U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black to overturn the ruling. Johnson became a U.S. senator, winning the general election.
During the Red Scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s, Fortas came to widespread notice as the defense attorney for Owen Lattimore. In 1950, Fortas often clashed with Senator Joseph McCarthy when representing Lattimore before the Tydings Committee and later before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee.
Read more about this topic: Abe Fortas
Famous quotes containing the words private practice, private and/or practice:
“He said that private practice in medicine ought to be put down by law. When I asked him why, he said that private doctors were ignorant licensed murders.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Like those before it, this decade takes on the marketable subtleties of a private phenomenon: parenthood. Mothers are being teased out of the home and into the agora for a public trial. Are we doing it right? Do we have the right touch? The right toys? The right lights? Is our child going to grow up tall, thin and bright? Something private, and precious, has become public, vulgarized—and scored by impersonal judges.”
—Sonia Taitz (20th century)
“Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid- twentieth century.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)