Brandeis, Louis

Brandeis, Louis (Dembitz)

Louis Brandeis.

(credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born Nov. 13, 1856, Louisville, Ky., U.S.—died Oct. 5, 1941, Washington, D.C.) U.S. jurist. The son of Bohemian Jewish immigrants, he attended schools in Kentucky and Germany before obtaining his law degree from Harvard (1877). As a lawyer in Boston (1877–1916), he was known as “the people's attorney” for his defense of the constitutionality of several state hours-and-wages laws, his devising of a savings-bank life-insurance plan for working people, and his efforts to strengthen the government's antitrust power. His work influenced passage in 1914 of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act. He also developed what came to be called the “Brandeis brief,” in which economic and sociological data, historical material, and expert opinion are marshaled to support a legal argument. Appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States (1916), he was noted for his devotion to freedom of speech. Many of his minority opinions, in which he was often aligned with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., later were accepted by the court in the New Deal era. His appointment as the first Jewish justice was vigorously opposed by some business interests and anti-Semitic groups. He served until 1939. Brandeis University is named for him.