Louis Brandeis: Man

“I spoke with him [Brandeis] at length, in German. I saw he's a very great man who can't bear injustice being done to anyone, anywhere…His soul is hewn of the purest marble.”

Louis Brandeis

Abraham Isaac Kook, Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution, Yehuda Mirsky (2014).

Soul

“In the field of modern business, so rich in opportunity for the exercise of man's finest and most varied mental faculties and moral qualities, mere money-making cannot be regarded as the legitimate end. Neither can mere growth of bulk or power be admitted as a worthy ambition. Nor can a man nobly mindful of his serious responsibilities to society view business as a game; since with the conduct of business human happiness or misery is inextricably interwoven.”

Louis Brandeis

"Business — The New Profession", La Follette's Weekly Magazine, Volume 4, No. 47 (November 23, 1912), p. 7.
Extra-judicial writings

Money , Exercises , Game , Business

“When a man feels that he cannot leave his work, it is a sure sign of an impending collapse.”

Louis Brandeis

Letter to Alfred Brandeis (March 8, 1897), reprinted in Letters of Louis D. Brandeis Volume I 127 (Melvin I. Urovsky & David W. Levy, eds., State University of New York Press 1971).
Extra-judicial writings

Feeling

“In a time of moral and intellectual anarchy, he handed on the great tradition of faith in the mind and spirit of man.”

Louis Brandeis

Dean Acheson, former clerk to Justice Brandeis, after Brandeis’s death in 1941.

Faith , Time

“The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone -- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”

Louis Brandeis

Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).
Judicial opinions

Life , Men , Pain , Pleasure

“[T]hat which is man-made can be unmade.”

Louis Brandeis

Letter to Frank Albert Fetter (November 26, 1940), reprinted in Letters of Louis D. Brandeis Volume V 648 (Melvin I. Urovsky & David W. Levy, eds.,State University of New York Press 1978).
Extra-judicial writings

“Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means -- to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal -- would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face.”

Louis Brandeis

Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).
Judicial opinions

People , Law , Teachers

“The bow must be strung and unstrung... there must be time also for the unconscious thinking which comes to the busy man in his play.”

Louis Brandeis

Letter to William Harrison Dunbar (February 2, 1893), reprinted in Letters of Louis D. Brandeis Volume I (1870–1907): Urban Reformer 109 (Melvin I. Urovsky & David W. Levy, eds., State University of New York Press 1971).
Extra-judicial writings

Business , Thinking , Time

“There must be opportunities for judgment to mature. When, therefore, you increase your business to a very great extent, and the multitude of problems increase with its growth, you will find, in the first place, that the man at the head has a diminishing knowledge of the facts and, in the second place, a diminishing opportunity of exercising a careful judgment upon them.”

Louis Brandeis

Testimony before the United States Senate, Committee On Interstate Commerce (December 14, 1911).
Extra-judicial writings

Exercises , Business , Knowledge , Problem

“With deepest veneration and fellow feeling, I clasp your hand on the occasion of your eightieth birthday. I know of no other person who combines such profound intellectual gifts with such self-renunciation while finding the whole meaning of his life in quiet service to the community. We -- all of us -- thank you not only for what you have accomplished and brought about, but also because we feel happy that such a man should exist at all in this time of ours, which is so lacking in genuine personalities.
With reverent greetings….”

Louis Brandeis

Albert Einstein, letter to Justice Brandeis on 1936-11-10, ibid.
Dukas and Hoffman comment: "the handwritten original is among the Brandeis papers at the Law School of the University of Louisville."

Life , Feeling , Communication , Birthday

“The progress of science in furnishing the government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wire tapping. Ways may some day be developed by which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home. Advances in the psychic and related sciences may bring means of exploring unexpressed beliefs, thoughts and emotions. 'That places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer' was said by James Otis of much lesser intrusions than these. 1 To Lord Camden a far slighter intrusion seemed 'subversive of all the comforts of society.”

Louis Brandeis

Can it be that the Constitution affords no protection against such invasions of individual security?
Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).
Judicial opinions

Secret , Way , Home , Science

“A man is a better citizen of the United States for being also a loyal citizen of his state, and of his city; for being loyal to his family, and to his profession or trade; for being loyal to his college or his lodge.... For only through the ennobling effect of its strivings can we develop the best that is in us and give to this country the full benefit of our great inheritance.”

Louis Brandeis

The Jewish Problem And How to Solve It (1915).
Extra-judicial writings

Family , Country