Born in
Manhattan, New York City, Fuld was the son of Emanuel I. Fuld (a
proofreader of the
New York Times) and Hermine (Frisch) Fuld. He graduated from
City College of New York in 1923, and received an
LL.B. from
Columbia University in 1926. Fuld engaged in private practice until 1935, when he was hired as an investigator by
Thomas E. Dewey, Special Prosecutor of Rackets in Manhattan and a schoolmate of Fuld's at Columbia. Fuld's specialty was developing new theories to prosecute racketeers, including
Charles "Lucky" Luciano and
James J. Hines, the
Tammany Hall district leader. In November 1937, Dewey was elected District Attorney of New York County, and appointed Fuld Head of the Indictment Bureau. From 1939 to 1943, he was Chief of the Appeals Bureau. Afterwards he resumed his private practice On April 25, 1946, Fuld was appointed by Dewey, now Governor, a judge of the
New York Court of Appeals to fill the vacancy caused by the death of
George Z. Medalie. In
November 1946, he was elected on the
Republican ticket to a 14-year term, and re-elected on the Republican and
Democratic tickets in
1960. In
1966, he was elected unopposed Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals. In that capacity, after the
Attica Prison riot was brutally suppressed in 1971, Governor
Nelson Rockefeller invited him and four other state judges to appoint a citizens' committee to investigate the entire affair. He retired from the bench at the end of 1973 when he reached the constitutional age limit of 70 years, and returned to private practice. Judge Fuld authored the majority opinions in
Auten v. Auten and
Babcock v. Jackson, which are widely considered to be landmark cases in American choice of law revolution. ==Personal life==