Louis Dembitz Brandeis

"The trouble with Louis Brandeis is that he has an almost pathological fear of bigness," a friend once said of the great ex-Justice of the Supreme Court, whose death is today mourned by high and low alike. From his early battles against monopoly in the city of Boston to his monumental dissenting opinions on the Supreme Court bench, Brandeis objected to size--to financial pyramids, to huge monopolies, to interminable leases. When speaking of the necessity for control of such institutions, he was fond of quoting an old German proverb: "Care is taken that the trees do not scrape the skies."

From the beginning of his career, Brandeis' words and actions unceasingly carried out the policy of social direction that he helped to make famous. He was an individualist in his actions without adhering to laissez-faire; he was a collectivist in his program without adhering to the bureaucratic state. He had an abundant faith in human goodness and a tolerant distrust of human frailties. The strength of this precarious balance of thought lay in its being made up of a belief in the value of reason, an immense ethical fervor, a concrete and massive knowledge, and a firm insistence on our limiting ourselves to what is compassable. "When things become too big, they are taken beyond the realm of the compassable. They don't work. The human mind cannot contain them. They become tyrannical," he wrote.

For 37 years, as Boston's "People's Lawyer," Brandeis fought against this "tyranny of bigness." From 1907 to 1913 he opposed the New Haven monopoly of New England transportation; he perfected the plan for inexpensive unemployment and old-age insurance for workers. He struggled for higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions for laborers everywhere. In all this, he led the parade that has brought the economic and social emphasis into legal thought. On the Supreme Court bench, he similarly geared his analysis to economic change, and his directives to social action.

The people of this country owe a great debt to Louis Brandeis. If our present body of public servants consists, even to a small extent, of officials and experts who tackle their jobs with the fervor of conviction; if the typical member of such a body is a cross between the lawyer, the economist, the engineer; if he combines an objective approach with an eye for action; if he is turning from a passive to an affirmative liberalism--then a large part of the credit must go to currents that Brandeis set in motion. In losing him, America has lost a great force for progress and humanity.