Brandeis: The Social Justice
Since their onset, the railroad and corporation have been expansionist in worldview, left to themselves they grew beyond control, we see the formation of giant corporate Trusts in railroads, tobacco, sugar, finance, oil as the advancements of industry far outpace regulation. Born is the era of “Morganization”, and the first questioning of ‘too-big-to-fail’ corporative power.
For those who’ve been following along, the Progressive Era set the foundations for a bureaucratic, scientifically governed society, formerly known as the Administrative State or, derogatorily, as the Welfare or Nanny State. And, as we’ve shown most specifically in Brandeis Part 6: The Science of Law, regulatory and legislative law-making are two very effective yet underappreciated forms of social control. Here’s a short story on the most impressive four regulators in American history.
In his telling of the making of the modern US administrative state, Thomas K. McGraw, professor Emeritus (Business History) at Harvard Business School, names four historical figures most integral to its creation and who’s collective regulatory influence spans well over a century: Charles Francis Adams Jr., Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, and Alfred E Kahn.
And what a century to be a regulator, McGraw’s Pulitzer winning story of the four Prophets, spins a contiguous thread through some of America’s most tumultuous eras: William Henry Vanderbilt and the early 19th century robber barons (cartoon below), American Civil War reconstruction, the Mexican and Spanish-American Wars, 20th century Progressive Era reform, the First and Second World Wars, the New Deal, the Cold War policies of the 50’s and beyond. These are the four men most responsible for first cracking the whip on the American Horse, taming a once unfettered spirit into one of domesticated servitude.

John Quincy Adams.
McGraw mentions firstly, Charles Francis Adams Jr., from the famous old-English Bostonian Adams family, and a graduate of Harvard Law School. He was a Colonel and Brigadier General in the Union Army, a direct descendant of two US presidents, and son of Abraham Lincoln’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
As chairman of the Massachusetts Railroad Commission and later president of Union Pacific Railway, Adams’ regulatory career focused as one would expect, mainly on the railroads. He was a nationally recognized authority of regulation instigating the Massachusetts Railway Commission in 1869.
Adams was prominent during the Reconstruction period right after the Civil war in the regulation of railroads. His grandfather John Quincy Adams was a Federalist fan of centralized, administrative (scientific) government and Secretary of State under who else but, James Monroe, and together the two were the very authors of, you guessed it, the Monroe Doctrine.
To Adams, “the industrialization of America had gained a momentum independent of human will“, technological determinism was shaping society and the government was falling behind, “a serious institutional lag had opened up between corporate development and public response to it. As a consequence, private and public interests were out of balance.” What was needed was “an expert, a permanent, apolitical body – in brief, a regulatory commission … progress at any price is the watchword of the present.” Pg. 8 Prophets of Regulation.
The entire Adams clan have Progress written all over them, and Charles Francis Adams Jr., already fitting right in with the rest of Lincoln’s key men of Progress: Gilpin, Grant, Sherman, Alphonso Taft, et al. As all Union army members did, Adams literally fought for, and in the very name of Progress – but more on the connections between Brandeis and Lincoln later.
Background image is:
THE MODERN COLOSSUS OF (RAIL) ROADS, 1879 political cartoon in PUCK MAGAZINE. A giant William Henry Vanderbilt (son of Cornelius), President of the New York Central Railroad, stands straddling US railroads. Smaller figures of Cyrus West Field(founder American Telegraph Co.), of the New York Elevated Railroad Company, and Jay Gould, of the Union Pacific Railroad, stand at his feet. J. Keppler artist. These captains of industry the inspiration for regulation and Adams’ career spent regulating interstate railroad travel and communication.
*this cartoon a reference to the Greek sun god Helios and a former Wonder of the World, the Colossus of Rhodes. There is another famous cartoon called the Colossus of Rhodes in which is depicted Cecil Rhodes’ dream of a north-south continental railroad in Africa. Rhodes is seen in a similar fashion to Vanderbilt but straddling the continent of Africa, from the Mediterranean Sea to its southern tip.
“The Peoples Attorney”, “The Sage Advisor to All”, “Isaiah”, “The Greatest Jew Since Jesus Christ”: Louis Dembitz Brandeis
Second on McGraw’s list is our star protagonist, Louis D. Brandeis. (Loo – uhs Bran-dise. Here to the left, on his way to screw somebody). Not only was Brandeis named by McGraw as one of the most influential figures in the regulation of America, naming him, “a patron saint of the whole regulatory tradition”, but McGraw also names Brandeis’ personal law clerk and protege, James M. Landis as one of the four main prophets of regulation. This is significant in that it displays an influence beyond that of one man, and an interest by Brandeis in not only the continuation into perpetuity of his own precedent-setting legislation and regulation, but also the insulating of his own reputation long into the future, hidden behind the wall of scholasticism.
Today the spell is wearing off, and history shows Landis to be one of Brandeis’ primary cover agents, but he was only one of at least twenty other Harvard law students personally groomed under Brandeis and at least ten others under Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. through a triangular relationship with Felix Frankfurter at Harvard Law School.
James M. Landis is the designer and creator of another regulatory body independent of government you may have heard of, the Securities and Exchange Commission. Landis, a protege of both Felix Frankfurter and Brandeis, later writing of his year as clerk under Brandeis as, “one of the best years of my life”. Landis would later be selected Dean of Harvard Law School and second chairman of the SEC. The SEC best known for it’s supervision of Wall Street, but also has jurisdiction over much that people generally don’t appreciate: “regional stock exchanges, over-the-counter markets, corporate reporting activities, accounting practices, bankruptcies and public-utility holding companies” etc.
“Landis’ greatest contribution to regulation came during the 1930’s, in his design and administration of the Securities and Exchange Commission.” Pg. 53, Prophets of Regulation.
“In the history of liberalism, Landis embodied the generational links from Brandeis the old progressive, through Roosevelt and the New Deal, down to John F. Kennedy and the New Frontier. He served all three men.” [emphasis added] Pg. 53, Prophets of Regulation.
“James M. Landis ’24—scholar, administrator, advocate and political adviser—is known for his seminal contribution to the creation of the modern system of market regulation in the United States. As a highly influential participant in the policies of the New Deal, he drafted the statute that was to become the foundation for securities regulation in the U.S., and, by extension, the founding principle of financial market regulation across the world.” Harvard Law School.
Fourth on the list of most prominent American regulators, according to McGraw, was Alfred E. Kahn, a later disciple of the same regulatory philosophy as Brandeis, Landis and Adams. Kahn graduating Harvard with a masters degree in the Liberal Arts before he was 20, summa cum laude. Kahn an economics graduate of Yale, from the Institutionalist school-of-thought, his contemporaries were Progressive founder Richard T. Ely, New School for Social Research co-founder Wesley Clair Mitchell, and Kahn was influenced by economist, sociologist and leading Progressive intellectual, Thorstein Veblen.
Kahn took his cues from Veblen, “they studied the sociological and anthropological aspects of such institutions as the leisure class, the business cycle, the capitalist legal system, the labor union, the business corporation, and the regulatory agency. This last ‘institution’ proved especially important, and many institutional economists interested themselves in regulation.” As any economist or shopper knows, price within an economic model is a major influencer of behaviour.
And this maybe a window into why we see in The First American Fascists, why the one area Brandeis was consulted most by the Council on National Defense and the War Industries Board was “pricing”.
Now we address how Brandeis’ influence specifically was able to create such wide spread and long-lasting systemic change through legislation and regulation with two very important case studies: first Brandeis’ work with Harvard Law School in creating the modern clerkship model and, secondly, the influence his Brandeis Brief had on, not only the world of case law but social activist civil rights organizations like the NAACP and the ACLU into the 21st century.


James M. Landis, founder of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Brandeis protege.

Alfred E. Kahn. Master of Arts, summa cum laude, Harvard Law School

Felix Frankfurter.
The Brandeis Law Clerk System
“…. history has not fully recognized the important and lasting contribution that Brandeis made to the development of the institutional rules and norms surrounding the Supreme Court law clerk …” Isaiah and His Young Disciples. Justice Brandeis and His Law Clerks, Todd C. Peppers.
While studying directly under Horace Gray, Brandeis was one the first ever ‘clerks’ in US law history. Brandeis also learning from Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who had also studied under Gray. But more than anyone, it was Brandeis who was the first clerk and the founder of the clerkship model still followed today. Profound in that we already recognize Brandeis for not only being the founder of the ‘Brandeis Brief’, the main proselytizer of ‘sociological jurisprudence’, the founder of the Harvard Law Review and Harvard Law School Association (advising school curriculum and management), but we now find out Brandeis is also the one who establishes Horace Gray’s clerkship model, ‘professionalizing’ the clerk into the institution we all living today assume was just old tradition.
Incredible when you know Brandeis also famously not-so-famously was, the “architect” of Woodrow Wilson’s 1912 New Freedom campaign, setting the regulatory foundations for modern America by creating the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, refitting the Interstate Commerce Commission.
Brandeis personally put Frankfurter in position as professor of Law at Harvard Law School and made him editor of the Harvard Law Review. Frankfurter would eventually be named Byrne professor of Administrative Law in 1924. Brandeis also funded Frankfurter for at least the first years, other financial help for Frankfurter coming from some other names you may have heard before: Jacob Schiff, Julian Mack, Paul and Felix Warburg, Julius Rosenwald, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Learned Hand.
So, Frankfurter’s role is to identify the law students most well-suited to their plans and create and maintain a feeder system for both Holmes and Brandeis. This relationship would span from when Frankfurter left the House of Truth for his Harvard professorship in 1914 until his leaving Harvard for a seat on the US Supreme Court on January 5, 1939(!) Brandeis and Frankfurter overlap at the Supreme Court for one year and Frankfurter would eventually retire from the Supreme Court on August 29, 1962 due to a heart attack.
“…. after his [Brandeis’] death his clerks honored the memory and service of their former employer in a variety of ways. Several of them published ‘tribute’ pieces in law reviews and legal journals in the decades following the Justice’s passing, arguably becoming the originators of a literary tradition now followed by scores of former law clerks from all levels of federal and state courts.” pg.88 Isaiah and His Young Disciples.
“Frankfurter is certain to be ranked with two of his friends, Justices Holmes and Brandeis, as a giant figure in the shaping of American constitutional law.” Felix Frankfurter Dies, Retired Judge Was 82, Harvard Crimson, February 23, 1965, no author attributed.
His apologists say, “shaping American constitutional law’ as if it’s supposed to be shaped, altered, or moved.


Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
For those wondering about the clerks that worked for Holmes: Thomas Corcoran, Alger and Donald Hiss, Skull and Bonesmen George L. Harrison and Harvey Hollister Bundy (father of William and McGeorge Bundy), we see when combining the clerks of Holmes and Brandeis the makings of FDR’s ‘Braintrust’ and an ominous continuity of Progressive government well into the 20th century.

Founder of the Harvard Law Review, Justice Louis D. Brandeis.

Brandeis deliberately steered his disciples away from private law practice, instead wanting more, urging each of his 21 clerks to become “missionaries” for the Progressive cause and the advancement of sociological jurisprudence, to pursue larger ideals, Brandeis wanted them to become influential members of the management class, educators, teachers in the continued advancement throughout the century of Brandeisian law, and to protect the Brandeis legacy.
“If one pores through the biographical materials on Brandeis and Holmes, it quickly becomes apparent, that these clerks are the chief defendants of their respective judge’s place in the judicial pantheon.” pg. 93, Isaiah and His Young Disciples.
Eighteen of the twenty-one were either president, editor, or a member of the very institution Brandeis founded himself, the Harvard Law Review and according to Brandeis biographer, Philippa Strum, the “overwhelming majority” of his clerks were Jewish. Brandeis wanted them in the halls of influential universities, “a great service could be done generally to American law and to the Jews by placing desirable ones in the law school faculties” believing “in the Jew [there is] a certain potential spirituality and sense of public service which can be more easily aroused and directed, than at present is discernable in American non-Jews.” Brandeis: Beyond Progressivism, Philippa Strum.
To his disciples Brandeis was generally very distant and indifferent, their relationship strictly professional, Brandeis spoke frankly, for many it would be months before they felt entirely comfortable in his presence, and his clerks were kept in the dark, receiving very little advice from Frankfurter before being fed to the wolf.
Brandeis’ list of disciples an impressive one including future Secretary of State (War) Dean Acheson; Dean of Harvard Law School and Chairman of the SEC John Landis; Chief Judge, US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Attorney, William Sutherland; Judge, US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Henry Friendly; Dean Georgetown University Law Center, arms-control negotiator, Adrian Sanford Fisher; Dean Yale Law School, Harry Shulman; Deans of Harvard Law School Louis Jaffe, Paul Freund, and Henry Hart Jr; Wisconsin School of Law professors William Rice Jr. and James Hurst; professor Harvard Law School William McCurdy; president of AMTRAK and chairman of the FTC William Claytor Jr.; president of Phelps Dodge Corporation Robert Page; and others who went on to private practice. We see an interesting array of careers not so surprising when knowing Brandeis’ immense influence on American case and Constitutional law, the Supreme Court, Harvard Law School, railroads, industry and labor, security and privacy, and US secretaries of State (War). We see them all represented in his clerks.
We see in Acheson (Skull and Bones), and Benjamin V. Cohen (both lead attorneys for the National Consumers’ League during the New Deal) how Brandeis’ clerks continued to reform society with his method of using sociological facts and data collected in a brief.
“Justice Louis Brandeis left the Supreme Court in 1939, but in many ways his clerkship model has become the standard for the clerkship institution.” Conclusion, Isaiah and his Disciples.
DARPA in 2015 named their domestic surveillance program after Brandeis. Brandeis even predicting in his famous warrantless ‘wiretapping’ case, Olmstead V. the United States (1928) that television would one day be able to watch, listen and record people in their own homes, Brandeis amazingly revealing the actual intent of television technology. He forsaw a time of Total Information Awareness or, Full Spectrum Dominance and it shouldn’t come as a surprise, Brandeis started it all with many precedent cases in: surveillance, personal privacy, sterilization, sedition, censorship, anti-trust, labour, law, and so on and so on. In 2015, DARPA named their domestic surveillance program after Brandeis.


Dean Acheson, like so many others, was stricken by Brandeis’ physical similarity to Abraham Lincoln, writing in his memoirs, “his head of Lincolnian cast and grandeur, the same boldness and ruggedness of features, the same untamed hair, the eyes of infinite depth under bushy eyebrows, which in moments of emotion seemed to jut out.”
Another disciple, H. Thomas Austern saw his mentor as a combination between, “Jesus Christ and a Hebrew prophet”, while Fisher stated, “[Brandeis] seemed to be a combination of Isaiah the prophet and Abraham Lincoln. A raw-boned characteristic. He had a rough-hewn look, [and] a grave, almost diffident courtesy.”

So, now that we’ve established Brandeis as one of the founding fathers of American regulation and influential figure at Harvard, how exactly did he do it? What was his method of operation?
Legislation is the act of creating laws, while regulation is the process of creating rules that define how laws are applied. Here’s how Brandeis, an expert at both legislation and regulation on the local, state, and federal level set precedent in how to both create and then define the application of law with his revolutionary Brandeis Brief.
Brandeis and the NAACP
“Although Brandeis himself would forgo public activism on behalf of American blacks, his signature approach to lawyering and legal analysis would later provide sympathetic lawyers and judges with the tools and inspiration they would need to bring the national policy of segregation to its knees. For instance, the NAACP would build upon the role of lawyer-as-public-advocate pioneered by Brandeis when it established a legal defense fund to finance litigation efforts aimed at dismantling the segregation system. Civil rights lawyers also would adopt Brandeis’ signature style of brief writing (the so-called ‘Brandeis Brief’), which made generous use of sociological data to support legal arguments.” Pg. 846, Alabama Law Review, Louis Brandeis and the Race Question, Christopher A. Bracey, Vol. 52, George Washington Law, Social Science Research Network.
Bracey claiming herein that, after considerable investigation of his own, he had failed to find any public record of Brandeis advocating for the black American at all. So, he asks, if his record shows an absence of actual opinion, what exactly did Brandeis do for the civil rights movement? Bracey’s paper caused friction in academic circles yet Brandeis’s record is there for all to see, Bracey’s argument is valid, and this further substantiates our thought that Brandeis’ main interest throughout, like that of Lincoln and Roosevelt, wasn’t about civil rights as we think of them, but the standardization of an all inclusive new model of wage slavery.
“In short, Brandeis is considered an icon in American legal culture because we purport to understand his public-spirited approach to the law as having elevated our expectations of lawyers and judges and transformed our perceptions of the purpose of law in civilized society …. Yet, there is an aspect of Brandeis’ life – one that routinely escapes mention in the historical literature – that gives rise to a far more powerful critique of his celebrated image: namely, his conspicuous evasion of public issues that dealt with inter-ethnic relations between African Americans and Euro-Americans.” Pg. 861, Brandeis and the Race Question
And while Bracey does rightly identify a very historically significant void in Brandeis’ humanitarian record, and suggests in fairness we may need to look deeper into the lives of other justices, he doesn’t delve any deeper into Brandeis. Bracey perhaps being blinded by the same “revelatory light” cast upon the rest of his historiographer friends fails to put the entire mosaic together.
“Given Brandeis’ familiarity with the issues facing blacks in American society, his reputation for public vanguardism and social responsibility, and his purportedly strong predisposition toward vindicating the rights of common people, one naturally would assume he was among the first to confront such obvious and rampant public injustices”. Yet Brandeis failed to “author a single opinion in any of the race cases heard by the Court. More importantly, Brandeis voted with the majority of the Court in every one of these cases, some of which served to reinforce the core principles of racial stratification and subordination of blacks in American society.” Brandeis and the race Question.
of these cases, some of which served to reinforce the core principles of racial stratification and subordination of blacks in American society.”

Here we see the main argument against Brandeis, that much of what Brandeis set in place actually worked against the interests of the minorities he claimed to support, he further deepened harmful stereotypes and racial stratifications. Instead of freeing the blacks he helped to undermine their cause by attaching a persecution complex forever subjugating the negro with a sense of futility in his own mind. The Civil Rights movement itself has served to exploit the black race, to further entrench the thought of victimhood and enhance the thought of systemic disparity.
In an example of how Brandeis skirted the racial question we and example offered by Bracey in the personal letters of Brandeis himself.
Brandeis’ largely unknown role of counsel for the NAACP another strangely under reported aspect of his life in that Brandeis advised the NAACP’s early moves, giving advice to Florence Kelley and other NAACP founders on how best to initiate social change. In an example of how Brandeis skirted the racial question Bracey points to a case the NAACP was taking up against the Interstate Commerce Commission for failing to eliminate discrimination in railroad facilities. Brandeis received a letter from the NAACP’s secretary of the board of directors, Miss May Childs Nerney dated, September 10, 1914, asking for his assistance and pay particular attention to how Brandeis interacts, firstly on September 18th:
“So far as I know, I shall be in the city on next Wednesday, and could see you at 11:00 o’clock on that day. I have great doubt, however, that it would be worth your while to come to Boston for that purpose alone, as it does not seem possible that I should give you any advice of value in regard to the Jim Crow car situation …”
In a later letter of the same thread, on September 29 Brandeis reiterated to NAACP board attorney, Chapin Brinsmade and another NAACP founder Oswald Garrison Villard, that the best approach was to file a “formal petition …. with the Commission seeking redress for failure to provide reasonable accommodations on such railroads as appeared to be particularly serious offenders, and be prepared to make full proof in those cases.” Pg. 297,298,305, The Letters of Louis Brandeis Papers, Volume 3, Melvin Urofsky and David Levy.
Brandeis’ answer was to involve a necessary social justice aspect. To not just wait for bureaucracy to get around to an investigation but to provide the evidence to put the ICC in a position where they have little choice but to expediate the process or face public backlash. Here Brandeis creating circumstances using critical theory. And the Brandeis Brief became the working model and most effective tool of change for, not only the NAACP, but all social activist organizations across the board forever after:
“Thereupon the NAACP board dispatched Montgomery Gregory of Howard University to collect evidence and take pictures of Jim Crow car conditions in the deep south …. By the end of 1915, Arthur Springarn and the legal committee had “almost perfected” the cases, which were to have been presented by Brandeis. Brandeis was appointed to the United States Supreme Court in January, 1916, however, and Albert Pillsbury agreed to make the presentation.” Pg. 204,205, NAACP: A History of the National Association of Colored People, Volume 1: 1909-1920, by Charles Flint Kellogg.

“Florence Kelley sought the help of Louis Brandeis, who was at that time counsel for the Consumers’ League. Brandeis advised the Association that the best approach was to petition the Commission for relief, citing definite cases in support of their contention.” pg. 205, 205, NAACP: A History
The NAACP adopting and then, “building upon the role of lawyer-as-public-advocate pioneered by Brandeis when it established a legal defense fund to finance litigation efforts aimed at dismantling the segregation system. Civil rights lawyers also would adopt Brandeis’ signature style of brief writing (the so-called “Brandeis Brief”), which made generous use of sociological data to support legal arguments.” Pg. 864, Alabama Law Review.
Conclusion:
“Progressive legislation during the first Wilson administration exceeded that passed in nearly twelve years under Roosevelt and Taft. These new measures embodied many of Brandeis’s suggestion, yet were far from being all that he thought necessary. Before the anti-trust and other acts he had fathered were through the mill, he was urging legislation on more fronts. Here he was too early; it was not until twenty years later that his theories came alive in such New Deal measures as the Securities Axt of 1933.” pg. 408, Brandeis: A Free Man’s Life
Brandeis and his form of regulation largely formed from the Brandeis Brief, first used in law legislation and adopted as tradition, then we see him using it with the National Consumers’ League, the NAACP and the ACLU. His influence emanating from Harvard Law School still to this day.
Brandeis never once during his entire time on the Supreme Court dissented in a racial discrimination case of blacks. He voted with the majority every time. When it came to the prosecution of communists during and after the First World War, Brandeis wasn’t afraid of risking his reputation in defending their rights to speak freely and then spoke in terms of everyone being deserving of foundational concepts such as liberty and the democratic process.
“In the coming years, the use of social science data to quantify the harms of racial prejudice would become the ‘bread and butter’ of civil rights brief writing, culminating in tremendous sociological data-driven victories in Shelley v. Kraemer and Brown v Board of Education.” Pg. 900, Alabama Law Review.
Bracey, like everyone else looking into the life of Brandeis finds contradiction yet fails to put the puzzle picture together in its entirety; instead, choosing to stay with the easier border pieces.
Interesting to note Bracey contends four possible reasons for Brandeis’ absence while in such a position to help the plight of the African-American, but finds all four insufficient explanations in themselves. Left to speculate, he never finds the true reason. Moorfield Storey, the president of the NAACP from its beginning until his death argued that racial mixing was desirable and segregation laws worked directly against this desired “racial amalgamation”. Here again we see, they weren’t emancipating the black slave, they were just releasing him from solitary confinement, allowing him to congregate ‘freely’ with the white prison population, and sole purpose of emancipation was efficiency of governance. Here we claim the same conspiracy many did then, of a plan being executed through the NAACP of race amalgamation. Rather than freeing the black from enslavement they were merely making a business decision to standardize the slave trade and mix the different coloured chattel.
Brandeis’ dominant role in American legislation and then regulation is certainly celebrated among the intelligentsia today, his work first with Brandeis & Warren and then Brandeis, Dunbar & Nutter in Boston and New York, then his state work in Washington, have made the Brandeis name and regulation nearly synonymous (Brandeis coining the term, ‘regulated competition’, preferred shop, and scientific management); however, among the plebs, the Brandeis name remains ignotum notem. A noteworthy absence.
Brandeis’ early role in the regulation of the Boston and Washington Street Subway systems set the trail, and much national and state regulation followed: the Boston & Maine/New Haven Railroad Merger, the 1902 Anthracite Case, the 1910 Collier’s Ballinger Investigation, the 1910 New York Garment Workers Strike, the Advanced Rate Case (1910-1913), and the Boston & Maine/New Haven Merger.
In a similar fashion to how Edward Filene would bring Brandeis into the negotiations during the 1910 Triangle Shirt Waist Strike that resulted in the Protocol of Peace, we see Brandeis being suggested to labor attorney Clarence Darrow by muckraker Henry Demarest Lloyd. Together they gathered all the sociological data needed and then applied the Brandeis Brief in one of the most famous strike cases in American history. This pattern we see repeated several times throughout the Rise of the Expert series, where Brandeis would enter a room of high level attorney’s and leave their undisputed leader. His attachment to the State and the National Consumers’ League an influential elixir.

“The partnership of Louis D. Brandeis and the National Consumers’ League in the preparation of sociological briefs for the defense of labor legislation was by no means accidental. Brandeis has an enormous reputation among reformers of the century’s first decade, for he early applied his brilliant legal mind to solving specific labor relations problems. In 1902 he provided advice for Clarence Darrow, who presented the mine workers’ case before the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission created by Theodore Roosevelt.” The National Consumers’ League and the Brandeis Brief.
As we learned in Brandeis Part 6: The Science of Law, there is no form of social control more specialized or efficient than law, the legislative and regulatory process ensures long term compliance among the vast majority of people. Brandeis, the nationally known man-of-the-people, was spearheading the movement as “preeminent counsel” of the National Consumers’ League. And, by training a generation of the leading social activists and lawyers in the Brandeis Brief method, Brandeis again ensuring a legacy. A legacy upheld for generations by his progressive enablers is hard to penetrate and despite articles like Bracey’s, and investigations like ours, Brandeis’ life and afterlife remain a riddle wrapped in scholasticism hidden inside academia.
“After Muller v. Oregon, in which the assistance of Louis Bran-
deis was obtained for the state by the National Consumers’
League, there were more calls for help than could be answered …. Soon afterwards Attorney General Timothy Hogan sought the assistance of Brandeis for the defense of the Ohio Workmen’s Compensation Act.” pg. 284, The National Consumers’ League and the Brandeis Brief.
Attorney Charles Henry Butler, who’s family had been on the Supreme Court for a century said, “That fellow Brandeis has got the impudence of the Devil to bring his socialism into the Supreme Court.” pg. 280, The National Consumers’ League and the Brandeis Brief.


