From Progressivism to Modern Liberalism: Louis D. Brandeis as a Transitional Figure in Constitutional Law

Abstract

This article focuses on the role Justice Louis Brandeis played as a transitional figure in writing opinions that served as a bridge between the statist Progressives of the early twentieth century and mid-century legal liberals.

Brandeis was known as a civil libertarian in his day because he supported freedom of speech and labor union rights, which were the rights that the nascent left-leaning civil libertarian movement held most dear. But Brandeis was far from a consistent civil libertarian as the term has been understood since at least the Warren Court period. Nevertheless, Brandeis was responsible for guiding the Progressive wing of the Court away from the more consistently statist, deferential-to-democratic-majorities path charted by Justice Holmes to an agenda more accommodating to libertarian and equalitarian concerns.

Part I of this Article discusses Brandeis’s many deviations from civil libertarianism as it came to be understood in the post-New Deal period. These deviations include his acquiescence to coercive eugenics, his general lack of interest in African American rights, his support for protective labor legislation for women and concomitant disregard for women’s legal equality, his toleration of government abuses attendant to Prohibition enforcement, and his desire to repeal the Fourteenth Amendment.

Part II shows that despite these deviations, Brandeis had a significantly stronger record on civil liberties as a Supreme Court Justice than one would expect from someone of his Progressive outlook and background. Brandeis’s votes in favor of civil liberties created a civil libertarian corpus from the Progressive wing of the Supreme Court. This prevented judicial protection of what became core civil libertarian concerns from being associated primarily with the soon-to-be-discredited “Lochner Court,” and made it much easier doctrinally for later generations of liberal Justices to abandon early twentieth-century Progressivism’s blanket hostility to judicial review in favor of a jurisprudence favoring civil rights and civil liberties.

Keywords: Constitution, internalist, Buchanan v. Warley, Meyer v. Nebraska, Olmstead v. United States, Whitney v. California, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., James McReynolds, fourth amendment, due process, freedom of speech

JEL Classification: K10