Brandeis Confirmation Hearings
BRANDEIS CONFIRMATION HEARINGS
BRANDEIS CONFIRMATION HEARINGS. On 28 January 1916, President Woodrow Wilson electrified the nation by nominating Louis D. Brandeis to replace the deceased Joseph R. Lamar as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Brandeis, a Boston attorney, was a nationally known progressive reformer and the first Jew ever nominated to the Court. Wilson, who had come to rely on Brandeis's advice on domestic issues, was willing to face the inevitable political storm. He also recognized that Brandeis's appointment would help win two important constituencies in the approaching presidential election: Jewish voters and progressives who had voted in 1912 for Theodore Roosevelt.
Conservative leaders and newspapers exploded. They claimed that Brandeis was a radical and an unprofessional self-promoter who lacked a "judicial temperament." The religious issue was not emphasized publicly, but it probably influenced some to oppose the nomination. Progressives were jubilant at Wilson's announcement. For more than a decade, Brandeis had been in the forefront of crusades on behalf of labor, conservation, the antitrust movement, and consumer rights, earning the respect and admiration of many Americans sympathetic to progressive reform.
A subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee began hearings on 9 February, and every aspect of Brandeis's career was scrutinized by numerous friendly and unfriendly witnesses. The culmination of what can be seen as a symbolic struggle between conservative and progressive elements in American society came with the subcommittee voting for confirmation by 3 to 2 along party lines (1 April), and the full Judiciary Committee voting for Brandeis 10 to 8, again along strict party lines (24 May). In the Senate, on 1 June, after five months of vigorous debate, the nominee was confirmed by a vote of 47 to 22; only one Democrat voted against Brandeis, while three progressive Republicans voted with the majority. Brandeis began his twenty-three years of distinguished service on the Court by taking the oath of office on 5 June.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Strum, Philippa. Louis D. Brandeis: Justice for the People. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Todd, A. L. Justice on Trial: The Case of Louis D. Brandeis. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.
United States Senate. Hearings before the Sub-Committee of the Committee of the Judiciary … on the Nomination of Louis D. Brandeis to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. 64th Congress, 1st Session. 2 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916.
David W.Levy