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A Unique Portrait Session

On August 28, 1962, Justice Felix Frankfurter retired from the Supreme Court after suffering an incapacitating stroke the previous spring. During the interim, Justice Byron R. White joined the Court. Traditionally, a group photograph of the nine sitting Justices is taken after a new member joins the Court, but this time circumstances were different. Later that fall, then-retired Justice Frankfurter made a rare and brief visit to the Supreme Court Building to pose for a group photograph alongside Justice White, making this the only time a retired Justice has ever posed for an official group photograph.

By the time of this photograph, Justice Arthur J. Goldberg had taken Frankfurter’s seat on the Bench and the Justices posed again two weeks later for a group photograph that included Goldberg. For more on the history of the Court’s group photograph, visit All Together for the Camera: A History of the Supreme Court’s Group Photograph.