For the first 127 years of the US Supreme Court, the Senate did not hold public confirmation hearings for nominees. The first public hearing was held in 1916 for Pres. Woodrow Wilson's nominee, Louis D. Brandeis...
#CourtingHistory
2/ Brandeis attended high school in Louisville, KY before living in Europe with his family for a few years. He then returned to study at Harvard Law. He became a public interest lawyer where he famously wrote a brief defending a law limiting women to 10 hours of work/day...
3/ The brief focused on social science(?) arguments to defend the wisdom of the law's policies. For example, as @ProfDBernstein wrote in @GB2d, Brandeis argued that women have "more water" in their blood than men and this "inferiority" makes it dangerous for them to work 10+hours
4/ Because of this historic brief, today, "Brandeis brief" is used to describe a Supreme Court brief that raises policy arguments and provides social science or similar data to the Court. Bernstein's article on the history & myths of the "Brandeis brief": greenbag.org/v15n1/v15n1_ar…
5/ Although he was a high-profile public interest lawyer, his #SCOTUS nomination was a "surprise" to many. Detractors challenged his views on economic regulations, his closeness to POTUS, & his aggressive lawyering...
6/ Those same attributes endeared him to others. For example, this editorial praised him because he didn't have a "judicial mind" and did "not" "worship" the Constitution but instead praised Brandeis for "see[ing] the law as a growing, living, plastic servant of justice"...
7/ When some critics opposed him on religious, anti-Semitic grounds, defenders renounced those "narrow minded... out-of-date fanatics," and "foul, narrow Watsonian souls," and defended Brandeis's patriotism...
8/ Other religious minorities-including Catholics and Mormons-rallied to defend Brandeis against charges that he was unfit because he was Jewish (this is from a Utah-based newspaper)...
9/ And, at the same time, there was tremendous enthusiasm from the Jewish community for the historic nomination. E.g. Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf of Philadelphia called the nomination "a master stroke"...
10/ With the raging public debate over the nomination, the Senate scheduled public confirmation hearings for the 1st time in #SCOTUS history. But those hearings were very different than our modern hearings: Brandeis did not even attend his own hearings...npr.org/templates/stor…
11/ The opposition to Brandeis was led by a group of "Bostonians" represented by lawyer Austin Fox, who called witnesses, etc. related to 3 cases Brandeis worked on.. The Senate Committee that called the hearings seemed pretty fed up from the get-go... timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1…
12/ Even though he was nominated on Jan. 28, 1916, he wasn't confirmed by the Senate until Jun. 1, 1916. But he was eventually confirmed by a lopsided margin in his favor, 47 to 22. For more on the history, check out Professor @JoshMBlackman's post: joshblackman.com/blog/2016/03/0…
13/ And to learn more about Justice Brandeis, visit the Supreme Court Historical Society, supremecourthistory.org/timeline_brand… and watch this lecture on his life & legacy over at C-SPAN: c-span.org/video/?417143-…
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