FRAENKEL, OSMOND K.

FRAENKEL, OSMOND K. (1888–1983), U.S. constitutional lawyer. Fraenkel was the general counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union from 1955. He argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking protection for political and religious groups, aliens, individuals holding dissident opinions, or persons convicted on the basis of improperly obtained confessions. He assisted in the Scottsboro case in the Alabama and Supreme Court hearings. In 1931 he wrote The Sacco-Vanzetti Case, arguing the innocence of the accused and the unfairness of the legal proceedings. He was the author of books on civil liberties, including The Supreme Court and Civil Liberties (1941, 19606); Our Civil Liberties (1944); The Rights We Have (1971); and Georgetown Law Journal: Media and the First Amendment in a Free Society (1973).