Philip Elman

Philip Elman (14 March 1918 – 30 November 1999) was an American lawyer at the United States Department of Justice and former member of the Federal Trade Commission. He is best known for writing the government's brief in Brown v. Board of Education.

Elman was born in Paterson, New Jersey, to Polish-Jewish immigrants who worked in the silk industry. During the Great Depression, he moved with his family to New York City, where he attended DeWitt Clinton High School and the City College of New York. He went on to Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review in 1938 and 1939.

Elman began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Calvert Magruder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, 1939–1940. After a brief stint at the Federal Communications Commission (1940–1941), he served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter from 1941 to 1943. Among the opinions Elman was involved in drafting during his clerkship was Frankfurter's dissent in the second Flag Salute case, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. Elman and Frankfurter remained close friends; Elman would later recount that Frankfurter still regarded him as his clerk for years after Elman had joined the Justice Department.