Excerpts;
1) When his family’s finances became secure, he began devoting most of his time to public causes and was later dubbed the “People’s Lawyer.” He insisted on serving on cases without pay so that he would be free to address the wider issues involved. The Economist magazine calls him "A Robin Hood of 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 (FTC). 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 a new precedent in evidence presentation.
2) Against big corporations
As Klebanow and Jonas make clear, Brandeis was becoming increasingly conscious of and hostile to powerful corporations and the trend toward bigness in American industry and finance. He argued bigness 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 was creating mammoth companies which he felt threatened the well-being of millions of Americans.[2]:76 Although the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was enacted in 1890, it was not until the 1900s that there was any major effort to apply it.
In fact, by 1910 Brandeis noticed that even America's leadership, including President Theodore Roosevelt, were beginning to question the value of antitrust policies. Business experts were contending that "there was nothing that could prevent to continuing concentration of industry and therefore, like it or not, big business was here to stay."[2]:76 As a result, leaders like Roosevelt saw the need to "regulate," but not limit, the growth and operation of corporate monopolies, whereas Brandeis felt the trend to bigness should be slowed, if not reversed. His experience convinced him that monopolies and trusts were "neither inevitable nor desirable." In support of Brandeis's position were presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan and Robert M. LaFollette, senator from Wisconsin.[2]
Brandeis furthermore denied that large trusts were more efficient than the smaller firms which were generally driven out of business. He argued the opposite was often true, that monopolistic enterprises became "less innovative" because, he wrote, their "secure positions freed them from the necessity which has always been the mother of invention." To him there was no way an executive could learn all the details of running a huge and unwieldy company. "There is a limit to what one man can do well," he wrote. Brandeis was naturally aware of the economies of scale and initially lower prices offered by growing companies, but he emphasized the future by claiming that once a trust drove out its competition, "the quality of its products tended to decline while the prices charged for them tended to go up." Eventually, he felt, the trusts would be like "clumsy dinosaurs, which, if they ever had to face real competition, would collapse of their own weight." In an address to the Economic Club of New York in 1912, he said:
- "We learned long ago that liberty could be preserved only by limiting in some way the freedom of action of individuals; that otherwise liberty would necessarily yield to absolutism; and in the same way we have learned that unless there be regulation of competition, its excesses will lead to the destruction of competition, and monopoly will take its place.
- "A large part of our people have also learned that efficiency in business does not grow indefinitely with the size of business. Very often, a business grows in efficiency as it grows from a small business to a large business; but there is a unit of greatest efficiency in every business, at any time, and a business may be too large to be efficient, as well as too small. Our people have also learned to understand the true reason for a large part of those huge profits which have made certain trusts conspicuous. They have learned that these profits are not due in the main to efficiency, but are due to the control of the market, to the exercise by a small body of men of the sovereign taxing power."[16]
[edit] Against mass consumerism
Among Brandeis's key themes was the conflict he saw between nineteenth-century values with its culture of the small producer, against an emerging twentieth-century age of big business and its consumerist mass society. McCraw notes that Brandeis's "hostility to the new consumerism found vivid expression in his own behavior. Though himself a millionaire, he disliked most other wealthy persons, being profoundly disturbed by their ostentatious consumption." He never shopped for his own clothes, preferring to reorder the same suits that served him well, nor did he own a yacht like his friends, but was satisfied with his canoe.As a result, he developed a hatred of advertising and a loss of respect for the average "manipulated" consumer. He recognized that a dependence by newspapers and magazines on advertising for their revenues caused them to be "less free" than they should be. And national advertisers further undermined the relationship between consumers and local businesses. He went so far, writes McCraw, as to "urge journalists to 'teach the public' such lessons as 'to look with suspicion upon every advertised article'."
But in general, Brandeis felt that consumers were becoming "servile, self-indulgent, indolent, [and] ignorant." The consumer, he said, "had abrogated his role as a countervailing power against bigness. . . He lies not only supine, but paralyzed, and deserves to suffer like others who take their lickings 'lying down.'" He was repelled by the flaunting materialism overtaking America, often denouncing conspicuous consumption. But by doing so, notes McCraw, "he drifted imperceptibly into an attack on consumer preference, a principle that lies at the very core of a market economy."[7]:107
http://www.dailypaul.com/143014/louis-brandeis-zionism-the-federal-reserve-an-interesting-connection
Excerpt:
Louis Brandeis, Zionism & The Federal Reserve: An Interesting Connection
Submitted by bravoseis on Tue, 08/24/2010 - 12:57
Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856-1941) was a highly influential American lawyer and theorist of Antitrust during the Progressive Era. As an advisor to President Woodrow Wilson, he was a driving force in the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, and the law establishing the Federal Trade Commission. Appointed to the Supreme Court in 1916, he was the leading liberal on the Court (1916-1939), a proponent of small business and an enemy of bigness, and a leader of the Zionist movement to build up Israel.
He was a strong advocate of Natural Rights and freedom of speech. He graduating from Harvard Law School in 1877, were he co-wrote the famous article "The Right to Privacy," in 1890. [1] As a leading lawyer in Boston he supported the union movement, women's rights and an increase in the minimum wage; he fought monopolistic railroads. In 1916 he was appointed to the United States Supreme Court, and was confirmed despite strong conservative opposition. He served until 1939. Although a supporter of government intervention and some of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal he opposed bigness and argued that the National Recovery Administration was unconstitutional. He is most famous for opposing big business and defining the right to privacy.
He was a strong advocate of Natural Rights and freedom of speech. He graduating from Harvard Law School in 1877, were he co-wrote the famous article "The Right to Privacy," in 1890. [1] As a leading lawyer in Boston he supported the union movement, women's rights and an increase in the minimum wage; he fought monopolistic railroads. In 1916 he was appointed to the United States Supreme Court, and was confirmed despite strong conservative opposition. He served until 1939. Although a supporter of government intervention and some of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal he opposed bigness and argued that the National Recovery Administration was unconstitutional. He is most famous for opposing big business and defining the right to privacy.
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