Walter Pollak

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Walter Pollak (1887–1940) was a 20th-century American

Supreme Court of Communist Benjamin Gitlow and the Scottsboro Boys.[1][2]

Background

Walter Heilprin Pollak was born on June 4, 1887, in Summit, New Jersey to Gustav Pollak (born circa 1849 in Vienna, Austria; died 1919) and Celia Heilprin in a family of "bookish, nonreligious Jews" who had come to the States in the 1850s. His father was an editor and writer for The Nation magazine. He had two older siblings: a brother, Francis D. Pollak (born in 1876), who also became a lawyer, and a sister, Meta Pollak (born in 1879). Walter Pollak attended DeWitt Clinton High School and then Columbia University in New York City. In 1907, he graduated from Harvard University and in 1910 from Harvard Law School.[1][2][3]

Career

Pollak become lifelong friends with Benjamin N. Cardozo after working at Simpson, Warren and Cardozo in the 1910s

Pollak first joined the law firm of

Sullivan and Cromwell but within two years had moved to Simpson, Warren and Cardozo, where he started a lifelong friendship with Benjamin N. Cardozo (who in 1913 left the firm to become a New York Supreme Court Justice). Pollak stayed on, and the firm eventually became Engelhard, Pollak, Pitcher, Stern and Clarke.[1][2]

During the 1920s, according to Max Lowenthal, Pollak was part of a "loose partnership" of radical attorneys that included Joseph R. Brodsky, Swinburne Hale, Walter Nelles, Isaac Shorr, Carol Weiss King, and King's brother-in-law Carl Stern.[4][5][6][7][8]

Pollak defended Communist leader Benjamin Gitlow in 1925

In 1925, on behalf of the

incorporated and thus protected fundamental provisions of the Bill of Rights, including the freedom of speech. (New York State Governor Al Smith commuted Gitlow's sentence.)[1]

In the early 1930s, on behalf of International Labor Defense, Pollak joined the defense team of the Scottsboro Boys with Joseph R. Brodsky. He took an active part in framing the appeals in Powell v. Alabama (1932), as well as Norris v. Alabama and Patterson v. Alabama (both 1935), the latter of which he argued with the support of the ACLU.[1]

In 1937, during the

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison).[1]

Personal and death

Louis H. Pollak, Pollak's son, was a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Pollak was the father of United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Judge Louis Heilprin Pollak, a former dean of both Yale Law School and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Walter Pollak was a close friend of law professor

Zechariah Chafee Jr.[1]

Pollak died on October 2, 1940, age 53, of a heart attack.[1]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h . Retrieved 2 December 2017.
  2. ^ . Retrieved 2 December 2017.
  3. ^ "Gustav Pollak". Cambridge Chronicle. 8 November 1919. Retrieved 2 December 2017.
  4. ^ Hearings of the United States Congress House Committee on Un-American Activities. US GPO. 1950. p. 2979 (Lowenthal), 2988 (death), 2992. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  5. ^ "Carol Weiss King". Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Retrieved 27 December 2010.
  6. ^ "United States ex rel. Brazier et al. v. Commissioner of Immigration at Port of New York". Court Listener. 15 December 1924. Retrieved 27 December 2010.
  7. ^ "King, Carol Weiss (1895–1952)". Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. 18 May 2010. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  8. ^ "United States ex rel. Giletti v. Commissioner of Immigration, Ellis Island, New York Harbor". Court Listener. 4 November 1929. Retrieved 28 September 2017.

External sources