Louis Brandeis

Louis Brandeis (1856-1941), American jurist, one of the most famous justices of the United States Supreme Court, known for his liberal views and his dissenting opinions.

Louis Dembitz Brandeis was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on November 13, 1856, the son of a prosperous grain merchant. After attending public schools in Louisville, he studied at the Annen Realschule in Dresden, Germany. At the age of 18 he entered Harvard Law School, graduating in 1877. From 1879 to 1916 he practiced law in Boston, achieving national prominence in many important cases. He became known as the “people's attorney” because he frequently worked for causes in the public interest. He was successful in securing low-cost life insurance for workers in Massachusetts, in blocking a railroad monopoly in New England, and in fighting for a shorter workday and a minimum wage for working women in Oregon and other states.

President Woodrow Wilson, who often consulted with Brandeis on such problems as anti-trust and labor legislation, appointed him an associate justice of the Supreme Court in 1916. Brandeis thus became the first Jew to attain this position. As a Court member, he often joined with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in dissenting opinions critical of the predominant conservatism of his colleagues led by Chief Justice William Howard Taft. During the 1930s the Court as a whole adopted a more liberal viewpoint, and Brandeis's opinions were less often in dissent. His major concern while serving on the bench, as in private law practice, was in protecting human rights. During his tenure, 16 major New Deal laws came before the Court; all but 6 of these laws received Brandeis's approval. In 1939 he retired from the Court and devoted the remainder of his life to working for the Zionist movement. Brandeis died on October 5, 1941, in Washington, D.C.

Important collections of his writings are The Social and Economic Views of Mr. Justice Brandeis (1930) and The Brandeis Guide to the Modern World (1941).