Forged by the moral certitude of the law, Louis Pollak saw injustice clearly and trod a path right through it. He died Tuesday at the age of 89.
His father’s character provided the ethical standard that carried him through the course of his life, Pollak said late last week. Although the late Walter Pollak, a lawyer who was frequently before the U.S. Supreme Court, handled Gitlow v. New York and represented the Scottsboro Boys, the only case that Pollak saw his father argue was an insurance-related appeal. “That seemed to me a very powerful inheritance,” Pollak said, wrapped in the cotton cocoon of hospital bedsheets last week at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. His father instilled in him the impulse to use the law as a protective means to help people live rich and full lives, he said.
