Dissent, Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U.S. 393 (1932).
Judicial opinions
Kontext: Stare decisis is usually the wise policy, because in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right... This is commonly true even where the error is a matter of serious concern, provided correction can be had by legislation. But in cases involving the Federal Constitution, where correction through legislative action is practically impossible, this court has often overruled its earlier decisions. The court bows to the lessons of experience and the force of better reasoning, recognizing that the process of trial and error, so fruitful in the physical sciences, is appropriate also in the judicial function.
Louis Brandeis: Zitate auf Englisch
“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”
Other People's Money—and How Bankers Use It (1914).
Extra-judicial writings
Kontext: Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.
Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1928). The last sentence is one of many quotations inscribed on Cox Corridor II, a first floor House corridor, U.S. Capitol.
Judicial opinions
Kontext: The defendants' objections to the evidence obtained by wire-tapping must, in my opinion, be sustained. It is, of course, immaterial where the physical connection with the telephone wires leading into the defendants' premises was made. And it is also immaterial that the intrusion was in aid of law enforcement. Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
Dissent, Liggett Co. v. Lee, 288 U.S. 517 (1933), at 565-67.
Judicial opinions
Kontext: Through size, corporations, once merely an efficient tool employed by individuals in the conduct of private business have become an institution-an institution which has brought such concentration of economic power that so-called private corporations are sometimes able to dominate the state. The typical business corporation of the last century, owned by a small group of individuals, managed by their owners, and limited in size by their private wealth, is being supplanted by huge concerns in which the lives of tens or hundreds of thousands of employees and the property of tens of hundreds of thousands of investors are subjected, through the corporate mechanism, to the control of a few men. Ownership has been separated from control; and this separation has removed many of the checks which formerly operated to curb the misuse of wealth and power. And, as ownership of the shares is becoming continually more dispersed, the power which formerly accompanied ownership is becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few... [and] coincident with the growth of these giant corporations, there has occurred a marked concentration of individual wealth; and that the resulting disparity in incomes is a major cause of the existing depression.
As quoted by Raymond Lonergan in Mr. Justice Brandeis, Great American (1941), p. 42.
Extra-judicial writings
Dissent, Gilbert v. Minnesota, 254 U.S. 325, 338 (1920).
Judicial opinions
Abraham Isaac Kook, Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution, Yehuda Mirsky (2014).
"Business — The New Profession", La Follette's Weekly Magazine, Volume 4, No. 47 (November 23, 1912), p. 7.
Extra-judicial writings
The Living Law, 10 Illinois Law Review 461, 467 (1915-16).
Extra-judicial writings
“When a man feels that he cannot leave his work, it is a sure sign of an impending collapse.”
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
Vincent Blasi, The First Amendment And The Ideal of Civic Courage: The Brandeis Opinion in Whitney v. California, 29 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 653, 686 (1988).
Concurring, Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 376 (1927).
Judicial opinions
Dissent, Liggett Co. v. Lee, 288 U.S. 517 (1933), at 580.
Judicial opinions
Dean Acheson, former clerk to Justice Brandeis, after Brandeis’s death in 1941.
Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).
Judicial opinions
The Opportunity in the Law, 39 American Law Review 555, 555 (1905).
Extra-judicial writings
Dissent, Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465, 477 (1921).
Judicial opinions
Statement to a reporter in the Boston Record, 14 April 1903. (quoted in Alpheus Thomas Mason, Brandeis: A Free Man's Life (1946), p. 122.)
Commonly paraphrased as "The most important office is that of the private citizen" or "The most important political office is that of the private citizen", and sometimes misattributed to his dissenting opinion in Olmstead v. United States.
Extra-judicial writings
"Hours of Labor" (1906), reprinted in Brandeis on Democracy 91 (Philippa Strum, ed., 1995).
Extra-judicial writings
Reported in Osmond Kessler Fraenkel, Clarence Martin Lewis, The Curse of Bigness: Miscellaneous Papers of Louis D. Brandeis (1965), p. 43.
Extra-judicial writings
“[T]hat which is man-made can be unmade.”
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
Dissent, Liggett Co. v. Lee, 288 U.S. 517 (1933).
Judicial opinions
Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).
Judicial opinions
Dissent, International News Service v. Associated Press (1918).
Judicial opinions
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
“If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.”
Dissent, New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262 (1932).
Judicial opinions
Introduction to The Family Letters of Louis D. Brandeis at xxi (Melvin I. Urovsky & David W. Levy, eds., University of Oklahoma Press 2002).
Henry J. Friendly, Mr. Justice Brandeis: The Quest for Reason, 108 U. Pa. L. Rev. 985, 999 (1960).
Testimony before the United States Senate, Committee On Interstate Commerce (December 14, 1911).
Extra-judicial writings
"Business — The New Profession", La Follette's Weekly Magazine, Volume 4, No. 47 (November 23, 1912), p. 7.
Extra-judicial writings
