The clear thinking and impartial judgment of a man in high office can do more to strengthen the sinews of a national body politic than a whole rack of laws. However keenly devised, these laws need the interpretive mind and the liberal understanding to make them useful tools of a state. In Louis D. Brandeis, associate justice of the Supreme Court whose 77th birthday will be celebrated tomorrow, are to be found the qualities of such a man.
On January 28 Mr. Justice Brandeis will celebrate another anniversary, the termination of 18 years as a member of the highest tribunal in the land. He is renowned for the record he has made in those 18 years during which little has happened that did not reaffirm his golden reputation.
It is a reputation that solicits tribute from opponents and supporters alike. Whatever errors in judgment the Justice may have committed were not, even violent critics avow, made on account of flimsy knowledge or hasty deliberation. The two most well-known qualities which are the stuff and substance of the Brandeis fame are his wisdom and crisp logical faculties. On his 75th birthday anniversary a leading metropolitan daily said:
“In the long series of Judge Brandeis’s decisions on matters of labor, of business, of public utilities, there will be many who have to disagree with him here and there. But his logic, his learning, the lucid order of his reasoning, the exactness of his language, his extraordinary penetration of facts, his intellectual energy, have long marked him as one destined to be memorable in the front row of judges.”
The facts of his life are not so well known that they cannot stand repetition.
He was born on Nov. 13, 1856, in Louisville, Kentucky, of Galician Jewish parents. After a two-year high school course there he went to Germany to pursue higher studies and returned, matriculating in the Harvard University Law School. At the age of 20 he was graduated with highest honors.
As a young man Louis D. Brandeis went to St. Louis to practice law. After a few months of struggle he joined Samuel D. Warren, a brother alumnus, organizing the Boston law firm of Warren and Brandeis. Massachusetts henceforth became his legal battleground.
The career of Mr. Brandeis before the bar has been the brilliant record of a man whose interests lie with the people. One of his earliest victories was in connection with a series of suits against traction interests through which he succeeded in preventing long-time leases at the public expense. Then he won a fight for lower gas rates in Boston.
As in the case of President Roosevelt, a weapon of defense in common use by the young attorney was to bring a case directly before the people. He crusaded his causes and in simple language made the people of the city of Boston his final judge.
In 1905 he was appointed counsel to a group of policy-holders which was investigating insurance premiums then being paid by the working classes. The cause won Mr. Brandeis at once to its banner; no stauncher ally could be found to handle the case. In the face of violent opposition on the part of the insurance companies, Mr. Brandeis proceeded to conduct a searching investigation into the practices of underwriting insurance and the laws governing the business.
One commentator wrote:
“He followed the usual Brandeis plan of injecting a new idea into the discussion. In this instance it was that the savings banks of Massachusetts receive payments on insurance, in order to save collection costs.
“With the aid of an actuary, he worked out a bill which seemed feasible and published his views. A committee had been appointed in the Massachusetts Legislature to consider insurance reform. Of the fifteen men on the committee, only one favored the Brandeis proposal. But by the time he had stumped the State, the committee was converted and reported the measure unanimously.
He fought proposed consolidation of the New England railroads as a dangerous monopoly. He championed labor reform and startled the legal world by his lengthy statements in elaboration of a brief, in which he indulged in prolonged analysis of labor conditions and social questions.
There was fierce disapproval when President Wilson appointed Mr. Brandeis to fill the vacancy in the Supreme Court left by Joseph R. Lamar in 1916. The appointee was described as a radical, as one who lacked the judicial temperament, as too intense a fighter, as too ardent a partisan.
Woodrow Wilson made the following comment after he had announced the appointment of Mr. Brandeis to the Supreme Court:
“I cannot speak too highly of his impartial, impersonal, orderly and constructive mind, his rare analytical powers, his deep human sympathy, his profound acquaintance with the historical roots of our institutions and insight into their spirit, or of the many instances he has given of being imbued to the very heart with our American ideals of justice and equality of opportunity.”
Since he has been a gentleman of the long robe Mr. Justice Brandeis has carried to fruition many of his liberal views on labor and social justice. He would “amend men’s social and economic ideas” instead of amending the constitution. He looks upon property as only a “means” not an end. He “would rather have clients than be somebody’s lawyer.” He believes first in human rights and second in property rights. He avows repeatedly his view that “to stay experimentation within the law in things social and economic is a grave responsibility,” and that denial of the right of experimentation “may be fraught with serious consequences to the nation.”
The same justice and equality is reflected in his philosophy of Zionism which Mr. Justice Brandeis expounded following the Palestine massacres four years ago.
“We should so conduct our affairs in Palestine that what we do will inure to the interest of all of the inhabitants of Palestine, Moslem and Christian as well as Jew.”
In November, 1929, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that the Justice “broke the silence he had maintained since he ascended the bench of the Supreme Court” when he joined a committee cooperating to establish an economic corporation in Palestine. The address delivered by Justice Brandeis at the Hotel Mayflower on the evening of the 24th emphasized his “unshakeable faith” in the ability of the Jewish people to establish a national home in Palestine.
Speaking as “one who had lived most of my life apart from the Jewish people,” he declared with feeling that “it is only a question of our will, intelligently directed, to make Palestine Jewish, and in making it so, to solve in a large part the Jewish problem for the whole world.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
