[Louis] Brandeis had a very distinctive vision of political economy that he persuaded Woodrow Wilson to adopt in the 1912 election and that he largely enacted from the bench. Jeffrey Rosen More Quotes by Jeffrey Rosen More Quotes From Jeffrey Rosen What is so inspiring about [Louis] Brandeis's writing is he saw it as a tool for democratic education. He would say things like the opinion is now convincing, now can we make it more instructive, after he'd gone through ten drafts. Jeffrey Rosen saws tools writing Justice Jefferson has a blind spot on race. You know, more than a blind spot. A terrible blemish on his legacy, slavery, for which he's properly excoriated. So, I think [Louis] Brandeis has done this as well. Jeffrey Rosen blind-spots race thinking Louis Brandeis beloved uncle, Lewis Dembitz, was an ardent abolitionist. His mother was an abolitionist in Kentucky at a time when Brandeis remembered hearing the shot from the confederate soldiers after the second battle of Bull Run. Amazing to think that he heard that and I studied with one of his last law clerks in college. And that encapsulates almost all of American history. Jeffrey Rosen uncles mother running Unlike [Woodrow] Wilson, Louis Brandeis did not support the segregation of the federal government. He was personally courteous to African Americans. He advised them and advised the head of Howard University to create a good law school. And that inspired Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall in their path-breaking work on behalf of desegregation. Jeffrey Rosen government law school He [Louis Brandeis] would have not had any patience with that great debate which you're right to kind of signal between Justice Scalia and Justice Alito about do you need a physical trespass into the home or onto the carriage in order to trigger the values of the Fourth Amendment. Jeffrey Rosen home justice order For [Louis] Brandeis, it's not a technical question of channeling what would James Madison say. It's how do we take these inherent human natural rights of liberty and translate them into an age of new technolog Jeffrey Rosen liberty rights age I came to believe that actually [Louis] Brandeis tended to uphold laws that he liked and strike down those that he didn't, generally strike down centralizing federal agencies in the New Deal, and uphold state economic experimentation. Jeffrey Rosen agency law believe [Louis] Brandeis is often painted as an acolyte of judicial restraint, or the view that judges should uphold laws whether or not they like them. Jeffrey Rosen judging views law [Oliver Wendell] Holmes never believed in the truth and morality of the laws he was upholding. He said, "I loathe the thick-fingered clowns we call the people." Jeffrey Rosen morality law people Do you think Bernie Sanders, for example, is citing Theodore Roosevelt as the progenitor of his critique of the banks when actually Roosevelt wanted to keep the banks together and regulate them. Jeffrey Rosen example together thinking That strain of anti-monopoly crusading egalitarianism really runs throughout American history from [Tomas] Jefferson to Woodrow Wilson, that finds its apotheosis in [Louis] Brandeis, continues through the New Deal, but then it sort of peters out in the '60s because progressives in particular become more interested in extending equality to minorities, and women, and other excluded groups, and little more suspicious of these old white guys, often from the south, who were crusaders against monopolies. Jeffrey Rosen egalitarianism white running [Louis] Brandeis, like [Tomas] Jefferson, is an equal opportunity critic of bigness. And he, like Jefferson, sees American history as this incredible clash between small producers, farmers, and small business people on the one hand, and wicked oligarchs and financiers and monopolists on the other. Jeffrey Rosen opportunity hands people [Tomas] Jefferson is more out of fashion, both because of his views on race, where he's properly questioned, that part of his legacy, but also because the libertarian critique of bigness in business and government, the idea that size is a danger is something that's shared on the right when it comes to government and on the left when it comes to corporations, but not both. Jeffrey Rosen fashion government race Basically [Louise] Brandeis was a Jeffersonian. And you say the timing is great, and it is in a lot of senses, except not for [Tomas] Jefferson, because this is a Hamiltonian moment, and he's the rock star of the minute with a great musical. Jeffrey Rosen rocks musical stars [Louis Brandeis] at the age of 57 decided to become the head of the American Zionist movement was more influential than anyone else in the 20th century in persuading Woodrow Wilson to recognize a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Jeffrey Rosen influential movement age He [Louis Brandais] did believe in the states famously as laboratories of democracy, to use that resonant phrase that Tea Party and conservative libertarians have embraced today because he loves state experimentation. Jeffrey Rosen party tea believe He's [Louis Brandais] so suspicious of bigness in government as well as business that he mistrusts even really top-down reforms at the state level. The most inspiring part of his legacy to me is his belief in the imperative and duty of self-education on behalf of citizens. Jeffrey Rosen top-down government self [Louis Brandeis] believes in natural rights of speech and liberty and the right to pursue happiness. Jeffrey Rosen liberty rights believe I'd say that [Louis] Brandeis practiced a kind of a "living originalism," to use the title of Jack Balkin's great book. He said you start with the paradigm case, which in the case of the Fourth Amendment was these general warrants or writs of assistance, but you define it at a level of abstraction that you can take it into our age and make it our own. Jeffrey Rosen titles age book I don't think he would have had any trouble answering Justice Sonia Sotomayor's excellent challenge in a case involving GPS surveillance. She said we need an alternative to this whole way of thinking about the privacy now which says that when you give data to a third party, you have no expectations of privacy. And [Louis] Brandeis would have said nonsense, of course you have expectations of privacy because it's intellectual privacy that has to be protected. That's my attempt to channel him on some of those privacy questions. Jeffrey Rosen data party thinking
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