If he has done nothing else, Abe Fortas has surely shattered the standard notion that a Supreme Court Justice leads a sequestered, monastic life that takes him from bench to book-lined study and back again. After admitting that he had continued to counsel Lyndon Johnson while serving on the court, Fortas cited several precedents to the Senate committee considering his nomination as Chief Justice. Among others, Presidents Washington, Jackson, Lincoln, Coolidge, Hoover and Roosevelt all had valued advisers on the court, Fortas recalled.
He could also have pointed to his own colleagues....
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