Misplaced Pages

#524475

61-573: The bookstore was accused several times of being communist-leaning; however, it was not operated under the auspices of the Communist Party and did not profess to be, although the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin and publications like Soviet Russia Today were sold there. The store handled popular works as well as an extensive selection of books and periodicals on political topics; these latter were not limited to works by communist-approved authors. The store's customers, many of whom joined just to get

122-418: A secular holiday. His parents raised their children to be "high-minded idealists" rather than depending solely on religion for their purpose and inspiration. In later years, his mother, Frederika, wrote of this period: I believe that only goodness and truth and conduct that is humane and self-sacrificing toward those who need us can bring God nearer to us ... I wanted to give my children the purest spirit and

183-520: A 1934 graduate of Yale and later one of the founders of Hill & Wang , was the bookstore manager until he left in 1942 to join the sales force at Knopf. The chair of the bookstore's board, David Wahl, a Library of Congress employee (later with the Bureau of Economic Warfare and the OSS), was accused of being a Soviet spy, and a number of books have repeated this allegation. He was never formally charged, and

244-525: A candidate. In his books, articles and speeches, including Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It , and The Curse of Bigness , he criticized the power of large banks, money trusts, powerful corporations, monopolies, public corruption, and mass consumerism, all of which he felt were detrimental to American values and culture. He later became active in the Zionist movement , seeing it as

305-761: A consultant and advisor to businesses, but also as a litigator who enjoyed courtroom challenges. In a letter to his brother, he writes, "There is a certain joy in the exhaustion and backache of a long trial which shorter skirmishes cannot afford." On November 6, 1889, he argued for the first time before the U.S. Supreme Court as the Eastern counsel of the Wisconsin Central Railroad in Wisconsin Central Railroad Company v. Price County , 133 US 496 (1889), and won. Soon after, Chief Justice Melville Fuller recommended him to

366-785: A few months in the Midwest and was impressed by the nation's institutions and by the tolerance among the people he met. He wrote home to his wife, "America's progress is the triumph of the rights of man." The Brandeis family chose to settle in Louisville partly because it was a prosperous river port. His earliest childhood was shaped by the American Civil War , which forced the family to seek safety temporarily in Indiana. The Brandeis family held abolitionist beliefs that angered their Louisville neighbors. Louis's father developed

427-589: A friend as the best attorney he knew of in the Eastern U.S. Before taking on business clients, he insisted they agree to two major conditions: that he would only deal with the person in charge, never intermediaries, and he could be allowed to advise on any relevant aspects of the firm's affairs. He preferred being an adviser and counselor, rather than simply a strategist in lawsuits, which would allow him to advise his clients on how to avoid problems, such as lawsuits, strikes, or other crises. Brandeis explained: "I would rather have clients than be somebody's lawyer." In

488-551: A government employee. 38°54′08″N 77°02′23″W  /  38.9021°N 77.0396°W  / 38.9021; -77.0396 Louis Brandeis Louis Dembitz Brandeis ( / ˈ b r æ n d aɪ s / ; November 13, 1856 – October 5, 1941) was an American lawyer who served as an associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939. Starting in 1890, he helped develop

549-404: A grain-merchandising business. Worries about the U.S. economy took the family back to Europe in 1872, but they returned in 1875. The Brandeis family were considered a "cultured family", trying not to discuss business or money during dinner, preferring subjects related to history, politics, and culture, or their daily lives. Having been raised partly on German culture , Louis read and appreciated

610-672: A negative effect on a free society. Brandeis was becoming increasingly conscious of and hostile to powerful corporations and the trend toward bigness in American industry and finance. He argued that great size conflicted with efficiency and added a new dimension to the Efficiency Movement of the Progressive Era. As early as 1895, he had pointed out the harm that giant corporations could do to competitors, customers, and their own workers. The growth of industrialization

671-424: A new precedent in evidence presentation. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson nominated Brandeis to a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States . His nomination was bitterly contested, partly because, as Justice William O. Douglas later wrote, "Brandeis was a militant crusader for social justice whoever his opponent might be. He was dangerous not only because of his brilliance, his arithmetic, his courage. He

SECTION 10

#1732772993525

732-477: A note found among his papers, he reminded himself to "advise client on what he should have, not what he wants." Brandeis describes how he saw himself as an advisor: Of course there is an immense amount of litigation going on and a great deal of the time of many lawyers is devoted to litigation. But by far the greater part of the work done by lawyers is not done in court at all, but in advising men in important matters, and mainly in business affairs. ... So, some of

793-548: A public advocate was later explained in his 1911 book, The Opportunity in the Law : 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

854-405: A record of good and bad political deeds, which would be open to all Boston voters. In one of his public addresses in 1903, he stated his goal: We want a government that will represent the laboring man, the professional man, the businessman, and the man of leisure. We want a good government, not because it is good business but because it is dishonorable to submit to a bad government. The great name,

915-587: A solution to antisemitism in Europe and Russia , while at the same time being a way to "revive sense of the Jewish spirit." When his family's finances became secure, he began devoting most of his time to public causes, and he was later dubbed the "People's Lawyer." He insisted on taking cases without pay so that he would be free to address the wider issues involved. The Economist magazine called him "A Robin Hood of

976-441: Is a call upon the legal profession to do a great work for this country. In one of his first such cases, in 1894, he represented Alice N. Lincoln, a Boston philanthropist and noted crusader for the poor. He appeared at public hearings to promote investigations into conditions in the public poorhouses. Lincoln, who had visited the poorhouses for years, saw inmates dwelling in misery and the temporarily unemployed thrown in together with

1037-489: The Harvard Law Review of December 15, 1890, on "The Right to Privacy." Stimulated by anger at offensive publicity concerning the social activities of Warren's family, it suggested a new legal concept that has had lasting influence. Building on diverse analogies in the law of defamation, of literary property, and of eavesdropping, Brandeis argued that the central, if unarticulated, interest protected in these fields

1098-469: The Harvard Law Review . The third, "The Right to Privacy," was the most important, with legal scholar Roscoe Pound saying it accomplished "nothing less than adding a chapter to our law." Brandeis and Warren discussed "snapshot photography," a recent innovation in journalism, that allowed newspapers to publish photographs and statements of individuals without obtaining their consent. They argued that private individuals were being continually injured and that

1159-849: The Louisville Male High School at age 14 with the highest honors. When he was 16, the Louisville University of the Public Schools awarded him a gold medal for "excellence in all his studies." Anticipating an economic downturn, Adolph Brandeis relocated the family to Europe in 1872. After a period spent traveling, Louis spent two years studying at the Annenschule  [ de ] in Dresden , Germany, where he excelled. He later credited his capacity for critical thinking and his desire to study law in

1220-501: The Zionist movement later in his life. Louis grew up in "a family enamored with books, music, and politics, perhaps best typified by his revered uncle, Lewis Dembitz, a refined, educated man who served as a delegate to the Republican convention in 1860 that nominated Abraham Lincoln for president." In school, Louis was a serious student in languages and other basic courses and usually achieved top scores. Brandeis graduated from

1281-474: The " right to privacy " concept by writing a Harvard Law Review article of that title , and was thereby credited by legal scholar Roscoe Pound as having accomplished "nothing less than adding a chapter to our law." He was a leading figure in the antitrust movement at the turn of the century, particularly in his resistance to the monopolization of the New England railroad and advice to Woodrow Wilson as

SECTION 20

#1732772993525

1342-636: The KGB in America positively identify him as "Pink", a Soviet intelligence agent recruited in the 1930s, arguing that the details of Pink's resume fit Wahl and no one else. Philip Keeney of the Library of Congress and Mrs. Nathan Gregory Silvermaster were among the other accused Soviet agents who had a connection with the bookshop. On May 16, 1941, staffers of the Dies Committee with a subpoena raided

1403-669: The Massachusetts plan to protect small wage-earners through savings bank life insurance . He supported the conservation movement; in 1910, he emerged as the chief figure in the Pinchot–Ballinger investigation , saying: "We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." In 1889, Brandeis entered a new phase in his legal career when his partner, Samuel Warren, withdrew from their partnership to take over his recently deceased father's paper company. Brandeis then took on cases with

1464-418: The United States to his time there. Returning to the U.S. in 1875, Brandeis entered Harvard Law School at the age of 18. His admiration for the wide learning and debating skills of his uncle, Lewis Dembitz, inspired him to study law. Despite the fact that he entered the school without any financial help from his family, he became "an extraordinary student". During his time at Harvard, the teaching of law

1525-430: The ablest American lawyers of this generation, after acting as professional advisers of great corporations, became finally their managers. Brandeis was unusual among lawyers since he always turned away cases he considered bad. If he believed a client to be in the wrong, he would persuade his clients to make amends, otherwise he would withdraw from the case. Once, uncertain as to the rightness of his client's case, he wrote

1586-545: The bookshop and seized its membership list of 1200 names out of the hands of a woman manager who was attempting to leave with it. This list was used by the Dies Committee to produce a color coded chart showing the membership interlocks between the bookshop and other alleged communist front groups in Washington. The Civil Service Commission later ruled that membership in the bookshop was insufficient grounds for firing

1647-457: The client, "The position that I should take if I remained in the case would be to give everybody a square deal." Brandeis and Warren's firm has been in continuous practice in Boston since its founding in 1879; the firm is known as Nutter McClennen & Fish . Brandeis defined modern notions of the individual right to privacy in a path-breaking article he published with his partner, Warren, in

1708-478: The continuing success of his law practice, they later purchased a vacation house in Dedham , where they would spend many of their weekends and summer vacations. Unexpectedly, his wife's health soon became frail, and so in addition to his professional duties, he found it necessary to manage the family's domestic affairs. They shunned the more luxurious ways of their class, holding few formal dinner parties and avoiding

1769-500: The demands of society. The press is overstepping in every direction the obvious bounds of propriety and of decency. Gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and of the vicious, but has become a trade, which is pursued with industry, as well as effrontery. To satisfy a prurient taste the details of sexual relations are spread broadcast in the columns of the daily papers. ... The intensity and complexity of life, attendant upon advancing civilization, have rendered necessary some retreat from

1830-530: The discount on new books, included prominent Washingtonians like Louis Brandeis . Other members, such as geologist Ruth A. M. Schmidt , joined the Bookshop because of its mission to work towards racial equality. Members of the Washington Bookshop who were federal employees were investigated by federal loyalty boards, while others were blacklisted as communist suspects. Lawrence Hill (1912–1988),

1891-636: The existence of these gray hairs." Brandeis became a leader of the Progressive movement , and he used the law as the instrument for social change. From 1897 to 1916, he was heavily involved with multiple reform crusades. He fought in Boston to secure honest traction franchises and, in 1907 launched a six-year fight to prevent the banker J. P. Morgan , who acquired the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad , from monopolizing New England 's railroads. After an exposé of insurance fraud in 1906, he devised

Washington Bookshop - Misplaced Pages Continue

1952-507: The glory of Boston, is in our keeping. In 1906, Brandeis won a modest victory when the state legislature enacted a measure he drafted designed to make it a punishable crime for a public official to solicit a job from a regulated public utility or for an officer of such a company to offer such favors. His anti-corruption philosophy was included in his closing argument for the Glavis-Ballinger case of 1910, in which he stated that

2013-459: The growing number of giant companies which were capable of dominating whole industries. He began to lose faith that the economic system was able to regulate them for the public's welfare. As a result, he denounced "cut-throat competition" and worried about monopolies. He also became concerned about the plight of workers and was more sympathetic to the labor movement. His earlier legal battles had convinced him that concentrated economic power could have

2074-557: The happiest of my life. I worked! For me, the world's center was Cambridge." After graduation, he stayed on at Harvard for another year, where he continued to study law on his own while also earning a small income by tutoring other law students. In 1878, he was admitted to the Missouri bar and accepted a job with a law firm in St. Louis, where he filed his first brief and published his first law review article. After seven months, he tired of

2135-463: The help of colleagues, two of whom became partners in 1897 in his new firm: Brandeis, Dunbar, and Nutter. He won his first important victory in 1891, when he persuaded the Massachusetts legislature to make the liquor laws less restrictive and thereby more reasonable and enforceable. He suggested a viable "middle course": by moderating the existing regulations, he told the lawmakers that they would remove liquor dealers' incentive to violate or to corrupt

2196-547: The highest ideals as to morals and love. God has blessed my endeavors. According to biographer Melvin Urofsky , Brandeis was influenced greatly by his uncle Lewis Naphtali Dembitz . Unlike other members of the extended Brandeis family, Dembitz regularly practiced Judaism and was actively involved in Zionist activities. Brandeis later changed his middle name from David to Dembitz in honor of his uncle, and through his uncle's model of social activism, became an active member of

2257-400: The influence of Chief Justice Gray." The new firm was eventually successful, having gained new clients from within the state and in several neighboring states as well. Their former professors referred a number of clients to the firm, garnering Brandeis more financial security and eventually the freedom to take an active role in progressive causes. As a partner in his law firm, he worked as

2318-495: The law." Among his notable early cases were actions fighting railroad monopolies, defending workplace and labor laws , helping create the Federal Reserve System , and presenting ideas for the new Federal Trade Commission . He achieved recognition by submitting a case brief, later called the " Brandeis brief ", which relied on expert testimony from people in other professions to support his case, thereby setting

2379-426: The laws. The legislature was won over by his arguments and changed the regulations. Brandeis wrote that "the law has everywhere a tendency to lag behind the facts of life." He chipped away at assumptions that legal principles should never be changed. He worked to break the traditional hold on legal thinking to make laws that met the needs of the changing community. Part of his reasoning and philosophy for acting as

2440-473: The luxury hotels when they traveled. Brandeis would never fit the stereotype of the wealthy man. Although he belonged to a polo club, he never played polo. He owned no yacht, just a canoe that he would paddle by himself on the fast-flowing river that adjoined his cottage in Dedham. He wrote to his brother of his brief trips to Dedham: "Dedham is a spring of eternal youth for me. I feel newly made and ready to deny

2501-404: The mentally ill as well as hardened criminals. Brandeis spent nine months and held fifty-seven public hearings, at one such hearing proclaiming, "Men are not bad. Men are degraded largely by circumstances.... It is the duty of every man... to help them up and let them feel that there is some hope for them in life." As a result of the hearings, the board of aldermen decreed that the administration of

Washington Bookshop - Misplaced Pages Continue

2562-466: The minor casework and accepted an offer by his Harvard classmate, Samuel D. Warren II , to set up a law firm in Boston . They were close friends at Harvard, where Warren ranked second in the class to Brandeis's first. Warren also came from a wealthy Boston family and their new firm benefitted from his family's connections. Soon after returning to Boston, while waiting for the law firm to gain clients, he

2623-554: The nation on a legal trajectory of such profound magnitude that it finally transcended its humble beginnings." State courts and legislatures quickly drew on Brandeis and Warren's work. In 1905 the Georgia Supreme Court recognized a right to privacy in a case involving a photograph of the plaintiff published without his consent in an advertisement with a misattributed quotation. By 1909, California, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Utah had passed statutes establishing

2684-462: The payrolls of the private transit companies. One alderman gave jobs to 200 of his followers. In Boston and other cities, such abuses were part of the corruption in which graft and bribery were common, and in some cases, even newly freed felons resumed their political careers. "Always the moralist," writes biographer Thomas Mason, "Brandeis declared that 'misgovernment in Boston had reached the danger point. ' " He declared that from then on he would keep

2745-428: The poor law would be completely reorganized. In 1896, he was asked to lead the fight against a Boston transit company, which was trying to gain concessions from the state legislature that would have given it control over the city's emerging subway system. Brandeis prevailed, and the legislature enacted his bill. The transit franchise struggle revealed that many of Boston's politicians had placed political friends on

2806-516: The portions of his FBI file which have been made public are so heavily redacted that it is impossible to determine what the substance of the allegations was, although it is known that NSA code experts speculated that he was the Soviet agent who appears in the Venona intercepts under the codename "Pink." John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassilliev in their 2009 book Spies: The Rise and Fall of

2867-445: The practice weakened the "moral standards of society as a whole." They wrote: That the individual shall have full protection in person and in property is a principle as old as the common law; but it has been found necessary from time to time to define anew the exact nature and extent of such protection. Political, social, and economic changes entail the recognition of new rights, and the common law, in its eternal youth, grows to meet

2928-491: The public servant "cannot be worthy of the respect and admiration of the people unless they add to the virtue of obedience some other virtues—the virtues of manliness, of truth, of courage, of willingness to risk positions, of the willingness to risk criticism, of the willingness to risk the misunderstanding that so often comes when people do the heroic thing." In the 1890s, Brandeis began to question his views on American industrialism, write Klebanow and Jonas. He became aware of

2989-551: The right to privacy ever written by a member of the Supreme Court. Some have criticized Brandeis for evading issues related to African-Americans, as he did not author a single opinion on any cases about race during his twenty-three year tenure, and he consistently voted with the Supreme Court majority including in support of racial segregation . Louis David Brandeis was born on November 13, 1856, in Louisville, Kentucky ,

3050-656: The right. In 1939 the American Law Institute 's Restatement of Torts also recognized a right to privacy at common law. Years later, after becoming a justice of the Supreme Court, Brandeis discussed the right to privacy in his famous dissenting opinion in Olmstead v. United States . In 1890, Brandeis became engaged to his second cousin Alice Goldmark, of New York. He was then 34 years of age and had previously found little time for courtship. Alice

3111-540: The role of a judge. In a letter while at Harvard, he wrote of his "desperate longing for more law" and of the "almost ridiculous pleasure which the discovery or invention of a legal theory gives me." He referred to the law as his "mistress," holding a grip on him that he could not break. His eyesight began failing as a result of the large volume of required reading and the poor visibility under gaslights . The school doctors suggested he give up school entirely. He found another alternative: paying fellow law students to read

SECTION 50

#1732772993525

3172-409: The textbooks aloud, while he tried to memorize the legal principles. Despite the difficulties, his academic work and memorization talents were impressive. He graduated in 1877 as valedictorian and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa . Brandeis achieved the highest grade point average in the history of the school, a record that stood for eight decades. Brandeis said of that period: "Those years were among

3233-445: The world, and man, under the refining influence of culture, has become more sensitive to publicity, so that solitude and privacy have become more essential to the individual; but modern enterprise and invention have, through invasions upon his privacy, subjected him to mental pain and distress, far greater than could be inflicted by mere bodily injury. Legal historian Wayne McIntosh wrote that "the privacy tort of Brandeis and Warren set

3294-463: The writings of Goethe and Schiller , and his favorite composers were Beethoven and Schumann . In their religious beliefs, although his family was Jewish, only his extended family practiced a more conservative form of Judaism, while his parents practiced the split-off movement of Frankism . They celebrated the main Christian holidays along with most of their community, treating Christmas as

3355-724: The youngest of four children. His Frankist parents were immigrants from Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic ), who raised him in a secular Jewish household. His parents, Adolph Brandeis and Frederika Dembitz, both of whom were Frankist Jews , immigrated to the United States from their childhood homes in Prague , Bohemia (then part of the Austrian Empire ). They emigrated as part of their extended families for both economic and political reasons. His extended family included Dante scholar Irma Brandeis , whose father

3416-576: Was Brandeis' second cousin. The Revolutions of 1848 had produced a series of political upheavals and the families, though politically liberal and sympathetic to the rebels, were shocked by the antisemitic riots that erupted in Prague while the rebels controlled it. In addition, the Habsburg Empire had imposed business taxes on Jews. Family elders sent Adolph Brandeis to America to observe and prepare for his family's possible emigration. He spent

3477-438: Was an interest in personal integrity, "the right to be let alone," that ought to be secured against invasion except for some compelling reason of public welfare. Brandeis saw emotions as a positive expression of human nature, and so desired privacy protection for them as protection against repression of the human spirit. Between 1888 and 1890, Brandeis and his law partner, Samuel Warren, wrote three scholarly articles published in

3538-530: Was appointed law clerk to Horace Gray , the chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court , where he worked for two years. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar without taking an examination, which he later wrote to his brother, was "contrary to all principle and precedent." According to Klebanow and Jonas, "the speed with which he was admitted probably was due to his high standing with his former professors at Harvard Law, as well as to

3599-596: Was dangerous because he was incorruptible ... [and] the fears of the Establishment were greater because Brandeis was the first Jew to be named to the Court." On June 1, 1916, he was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 47 to 22, to become one of the most famous and influential figures ever to serve on the high court. His opinions were, according to legal scholars, some of the "greatest defenses" of freedom of speech and

3660-719: Was the daughter of Joseph Goldmark , a physician who had immigrated to America from Austria-Hungary after the collapse of the Revolution of 1848 . They were married on March 23, 1891, at the home of her parents in New York City in a civil ceremony. The newlywed couple moved into a modest home in Boston's Beacon Hill district and had two daughters, Susan Brandeis Gilbert, born in 1893, and Elizabeth Brandeis Rauschenbush, born in 1896. Alice supported her husband's resolve to devote most of his time to public causes. The Brandeis family "lived well but without extravagance." With

3721-469: Was undergoing a change of method from the traditional, memorization-reliant, "black-letter" case law, to a more flexible and interactive Socratic method , using the casebook method to instruct students in legal reasoning. Brandeis easily adapted to the new methods, becoming active in class discussions, and joined the Pow-Wow club, similar to today's moot courts in law school, which gave him experience in

SECTION 60

#1732772993525
#524475