Who was a leading progressive reformer and the first Jewish justice named to the US Supreme Court?

Answer 1

Answer

President Woodrow Wilson nominated Louis Dembitz Brandeis, to serve on the US Supreme Court in 1916. He retired in 1939. In addition to being the first Jewish member of the Court, Brandeis was also known for his strong ethics and commitment to representing the rights of the common person. For this reason, Brandeis has long been known as
"The People's Lawyer."


Brief Biography

Louis Brandeis was the son of Jewish parents, Adolph and Frederika (Dembitz) Brandeis, who emigrated to the United States from Prague (now in the Czech Republic) in the mid-19th century to avoid the anti-Semitic violence that had erupted in their homeland. Louis was an only child, born in the US in 1856.

Adolph and Frederika ensured Louis was exposed to philosophy, classical music, literature, politics, and foreign language as a child. A serious student, Brandeis graduated from high school with honors at age 14. He spent the next three years traveling in Europe with his parents, and studying at the Annen-Realschule, in Dresden, Germany, where he honed his critical thinking skills and developed a passion for law.

Brandeis enrolled in Harvard Law School in 1875, at the age of 19. Unlike other law schools of this era, Harvard taught using a Socratic method of inquiry and debate, and incorporated the study of case law, rather than employing the more common technique of memorizing laws and statutes. Brandeis thrived in the Harvard environment, and graduated from their law school at the age of 20 with the highest GPA in the school's history.

Brandeis spent more than 20 years in general private practice. In 1889, he argued his first case before the US Supreme Court for the plaintiff in Wisconsin Central Railroad Co. v. Price Country, 133 US 496 (1890), winning a victory for his client and the admiration of Chief Justice Melville Fuller.

Although Brandeis was extremely successful in private practice, his heart was in public service and the support of causes benefiting the common man, earning him the appellation, "The People's Lawyer." He expressed the reasoning behind his decision to become a public advocate in his 1911 book, The Opportunity of the Law:

"The counsel selected to represent important private interests possesses usually ability of a high order, while the public is often inadequately represented or wholly unrepresented. That presents a condition of great unfairness to the public. As a result, many bills pass in our legislatures which would not have become law if the public interest had been fairly represented. . . Those of you who feel drawn to that profession may rest assured that you will find in it an opportunity for usefulness probably unequaled. There is a call upon the legal profession to do a great work for this country."

Brandeis opposed corporate monopolies, exploitative labor practices, public corruption, monopolies, mass consumerism, and other capitalist excesses harmful to working class people.

Brandeis entered public service during the Lochner era (named for the case Lochner v. New York, 198 US 45 (1905), a time when the government, including the Supreme Court, favored the interests of the wealthy industrialists. When he discovered he was fighting established case law that permitted businesses to impose excessive work hours on their employees, he countered the law with sociological, psychological, medical and observational data. This unique documentation, now known as a "Brandeis Brief," was effective in upholding a state of Oregon law limiting work hours for women in the landmark case Muller v. Oregon, 208 US 412 (1908). That Brandeis should prevail for the working woman during a period when the conservative Supreme Court routinely upheld the rights of corporations over workers, was phenomenal. Brandeis Briefs have since become a common, effective, and often successful, strategic tool in litigation.

Woodrow Wilson caught Louis Brandeis' attention during the 1912 Presidential campaign, when the Democrat ran against the incumbent, Republican Theodore Roosevelt, on a platform that included breaking huge business monopolies and ending special tax incentives and unfair labor practices that allowed giant firms to flourish at the expense of the common man (note parallels to contemporary political and business practices).

Brandeis and Wilson met during a conference in New Jersey, where they discovered they had similar goals for the country. Woodrow Wilson adopted Louis Brandeis' term, "regulated competition," to describe his planned approach to industry; Brandeis believed Wilson was the "ideal President."

After Wilson won the November 1912 election, Louis Brandeis became one of the President's most trusted advisors, although he never held a formal position in the administration. Brandeis is credited with with helping to construct the Federal Reserve Act and establishing the Federal Trade Commission, all from outside government.

In 1916, Wilson nominated Brandeis to replace Justice Joseph Lamar, who died in January of that year. Despite Brandeis success as an attorney, his devotion to the public cause, and his brilliant mind, his nomination was hotly contested. Many Republican politicians believed the attorney too radical, and were concerned about the impact he might have on the bench. His nomination was finally confirmed by a vote of 47 to 22, almost entirely down party lines. All but one Democrat approved his confirmation, while only three Republicans supported him with their votes. On June 5, 1916, Louis Dembitz Brandeis became the first Jewish justice of the US Supreme Court.

Brandeis joined a conservative Court. He and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., were often the only voices of dissent, and were particularly outspoken on issues of First Amendment rights of free speech. While both men were often in the minority, their eloquent and well-reasoned dissents have been widely cited in later cases.

Brandeis was still a member of the Court when Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President. He, Benjamin Cardozo and Harlan Fiske Stone comprised the minority liberal wing known collectively as "The Three Musketeers" (the most conservative justices on the bench at that time were called "The Four Horsemen"). Despite his liberal tendencies, Brandeis opposed many of FDR's New Deal programs, believing they gave the President too much unilateral power. As a result, he became known, unaffectionately, as one of "The Nine Old Men" Roosevelt denigrated for their failure to support his legislation.

Brandeis retired from the bench in 1939, and died of a heart attack in 1941. Many of the causes he championed, like wage and hour legislation, have become established law, and his opinions on the First and Fifth Amendments have a continuing influence on the Supreme Court and the nation.