Henry Jacob Friendly (July 3, 1903 – March 11, 1986) was an American jurist who served as a federal circuit judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1959 to 1986. He was the court's chief judge from 1971 to 1973 and presided over its specialized railroad court from 1974 to 1986.
Born in Elmira, New York, Friendly graduated with highest honors from Harvard College at age 19. He then excelled as a prodigy at Harvard Law School, where he achieved the highest grades in the school's history, was elected president of the Harvard Law Review, and is credited with inventing The Bluebook. After clerking for Justice Louis Brandeis, he co-founded the law firm of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in 1945 and became the general counsel and vice president of Pan Am Airways in 1946. On the recommendation of Judge Learned Hand and Justice Felix Frankfurter, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Friendly to the Second Circuit in 1959.
In his 27 years on the federal circuit, Friendly penned more than 1,000 opinions while authoring books and law review articles that are now considered seminal. He was especially influential in the fields of administrative law, securities regulation, and federal jurisdiction. His opinions remain some of the most cited in federal jurisprudence and he is considered one of the most prominent and influential federal judges of the 20th century.
Early life Henry Jacob Friendly was born in Elmira, New York, on July 3, 1903, the only child of middle-class German-Jewish parents, Myer and Leah.; . His ancestors were dairy farmers in Wittelshofen, Bavaria, who adopted the surname Freundlich (). His great-grandfather, Josef Myer Freundlich (1803–1880), was a prosperous farmer who lost his estate in a fire in 1831 but later made a fortune in livestock dealing. Josef's son, Heinrich, immigrated to the United States in 1852 to avoid conscription and anglicised the family name to Friendly. Heinrich began working as a peddler but soon acquired and ran a carriage factory in Cuba, New York. His son, Myer, moved to Elmira at eighteen to work for an uncle, Samson, manufacturing shoes. In 1897, Myer married Leah Hallo, the daughter of a shopkeeper. The family lived comfortably, especially after 1917, when Myer won great success as a mortgage investor.
Friendly demonstrated precocious abilities in reading and diction as a child; by age seven, "he could read almost any book written for adults." His mother was a bardolater skilled at contract bridge who headed a local Shakespeare club and "poured all her attention to her son." Myer, by contrast, was a distant, conservative father who impressed high standards of work and perfection. Together, the family lived in the primarily Christian, western side of Elmira—opposite of its Jewish community—yet were known as prominent members of the Jewish population. Friendly's grandfather Heinrich served as the city's parks commissioner and as the president of a B'nai Israel community. In a commemorative monograph by the Reform Jewish congregation, Heinrich was described as “one of the leading men of Elmira in the late nineteenth century." Though not devoutly religious, Friendly's parents attended temple alongside other German Jews and held a bar mitzvah for their only son.
As a child, Friendly was known locally for his earnestness. Outside of school, he frequented the outdoors, often visiting Mark Twain's study. He experienced his first exposure to law while serving as a teenage expert witness in a breach of warranty trial. By means of a friend's father, a lawyer, he developed a respect for the profession. He was also a committed reader who enjoyed baseball but became overweight and unathletic in his teenage years. Myer, a sportsman and fisherman, took his son on forays that Henry would ultimately come to reject, which disappointed Myer. Friendly also lacked dexterity and struggled with handling objects into adulthood; after puncturing his hand with a pencil, he lost function of his left-hand little finger and contracted a serious case of blood poisoning. Eye problems developed during boyhood, which would advance to retinal detachment in 1936, further complicated his health. A lack of childhood friends, combined with a lack of close relationships, also resulted in social and emotional defects that persisted throughout his life.
Education
Although he missed several periods of school away on family vacations, Friendly skipped three grades. He took interests in American history and English literature—especially English writers George Eliot and William Makepeace Thackeray—but avoided science. He became a versatile student at the Elmira Free Academy, where he was considered one of the "most brilliant students ever to attend" and once discovered a mathematical error in its trigonometry textbook. He was chosen to be class valedictorian and editor-in-chief of the academy's newspaper, The Vindex.; ; . Upon graduating in 1919, he sat the New York Regents Examinations and attained the highest scores ever recorded in its 55-year history.
After obtaining a copy of its catalog, Friendly was drawn to Harvard; two months after his sixteenth birthday, he left Elmira for Cambridge to matriculate at Harvard College, which had accepted him on merit. He was an isolated, underage student among classmates who largely came from elite families and belonged to exclusive clubs. Instead, Friendly frequented the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Museum of Fine Arts, and immersed himself with a focus in history, philosophy, and government. He especially enjoyed history, a pursuit reinforced by Harvard's emphasis on the field's intellectual and political aspects. Indicating his standing as one of Harvard's top eight students, Friendly's performance won him election to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. His successes in the classroom were noticed by peers. Classmate Albert Gordon recalled: "we thought of him not only as the smartest in the class but the smartest at Harvard College."
Harvard housed the nation's leading faculty devoted to European history, in which Friendly excelled.; . He took courses under prominent scholars Charles Homer Haskins, Archibald Cary Coolidge, and Frederick Jackson Turner. He studied government under Harvard president Abbott Lowell, and was exposed to European diplomatic history under William Langer. The professor he admired the most was Charles Howard McIlwain, whose course in medieval England he credited with being "the greatest educational experience I had at Harvard College."; . The medievalist urged that "one must read words as they meant to the people of the times rather than as they mean to us," advice Friendly later adopted as a judge.; . A paper written in McIlwain's course, "Church and State in England under William the Conqueror," earned Friendly the Bowdoin Prize; members of the faculty told him the essay could easily be accepted as a doctoral dissertation.; . In one exam, Frederick Merk judged an answer Friendly wrote as worthy of publication in an academic journal and assured him that he eventually would be appointed to the faculty.; ; . Friendly's work impressed McIlwain to such a degree that he encouraged him to study medieval history with the promise of a Harvard professorship.
In 1923, Friendly graduated first in his class, summa cum laude, at just 19 years old, "importuned to continue on for a doctorate."; ; ; . His reputation at Harvard was such that, when he defended his senior thesis, the defense was moved to Sanders Theater to accommodate the professors and students who came to observe.
Postgraduate years
Studies in Europe Inspired by McIlwain, Friendly contemplated a professorial career. He intended to pursue a PhD in medieval history after graduation, confounding his parents' wishes for him to enroll in Harvard Law School. After Harvard awarded Friendly a prestigious Shaw Traveling Fellowship for abroad study, he notified his parents of his ambitions for a doctorate; Myer and Leah then steered connections to contact Judge Julian Mack, informing him "about this dreadful thing that was about to occur."; . Following Mack's recommendation, they arranged for Friendly to meet law professor Felix Frankfurter with the aim of dissuading him from pursuing a career in history. Frankfurter convinced Friendly to follow through the fellowship—which enabled postgraduate studies in Europe for a year in Paris, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Oxford—then tentatively attend the law school.; .
From 1923 until 1924, Friendly sojourned in Europe. He witnessed the alarming inflation and social unrest within the Weimar Republic then traveled to Amsterdam and thirdly to Paris, where he attended the École pratique des hautes études for a few months and presented a French paper on 14th century parliament. He found the lectures on law there unimpressive, admitting that "between the two, I much preferred history...if anything could give one a distaste for law that was it." After stopping in Italy, his studies led him to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England. With the year "moderately successful" though still "somewhat dissatisfied," Friendly returned to the United States and entered Harvard Law School.
Law school
Friendly excelled academically as a young prodigy at Harvard Law School, finishing first in his class all three years.; . He quickly drew the attention and praise of its professors, including Thomas Reed Powell, a proponent of legal realism, as well as formalists Samuel Williston and Joseph Beale, and Zechariah Chafee and dean Roscoe Pound.; . After one examination, Calvert Magruder, Friendly's first-year teacher in contract law, left him a congratulatory note: "[I have] never run across as beautiful [an exam] book as yours in Contracts... [nor one with your] sense of values and emphasis, the logical construction of your answers, your compactness & facility of expression." Although he was not enrolled in any of his classes, Friendly was also the favorite student of Frankfurter and would be frequently summoned by him for discussions even during the middle of examinations. Under Frankfurter's influence, Friendly grew interested in federal jurisdiction and the emerging field of administrative law.
After being selected to be an editor of the Harvard Law Review in his first year, Friendly was then elected the president of the Harvard Law Review his second year. With Herbert Brownell Jr., the editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal, he drafted the first edition of The Bluebook and is considered its creator.; . On top of his commitments to the law review, Friendly was also an active member of the Ames Moot Court Competition, where he won the Marshall Prize for its best brief.; The summer of his second year was spent on an invitation from Frankfurter to make acquaintances with distinguished jurists Learned Hand, Augustus Noble Hand, Julian Mack, and C. C. Burlingham in New York City, then as an aide under Emory Buckner to prosecute former attorney general Harry Daugherty for fraud at the U.S. Attorney's office.; .