Home > West's Encyclopedia of American Law > Brandeis, Louis Dembitz

Louis Dembitz Brandeis's lifelong commitment to public service and social reform earned him the epithet the People's Lawyer. His twenty-three years on the Supreme Court were characterized by a deep respect for civil liberties and by an abiding distrust of centralized power in the hands of business and government.

Brandeis was famous for his prodigious intellect and his well-crafted, detailed dissents. He was a man of principle who enhanced the image of the legal profession by living up to his belief that lawyers should possess "the moral courage in the face of financial loss and personal ill-will to stand for right and justice."

Brandeis was born November 13, 1856, in Louisville, Kentucky, the youngest of four children of Adolph Brandeis and Fredericka Dembitz Brandeis. His parents were refined and well-to-do immigrants who left Prague, then part of Bohemia, in 1849. A brilliant student, Brandeis excelled in the public...