This book derives from the private papers of Louis D. Brandeis
relating to his service as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United
States from June 1916 to February 1939.

Before President Wilson appointed him to the Court, Brandeis,
though he had held no office save, briefly, that of ad hoc special counsel
to the Interstate Commerce Commission, had had a great public career.
He had, with unsurpassed courage, dedication, and effectiveness, en-
gaged in the private practice of the public profession of the law. Per-
haps the best concise estimate of Brandeis' achievement at the Bar --
from which it is illuminating to quote -- is found in an unpublished
letter of his junior but close friend, Professor Felix Frankfurter of the
Harvard Law School. Dated January 19, 1915, and addressed -- how
these ironies recur in the lives of great men -- to one of those seats of
ephemeral judgment, in this instance the Committee on Admissions of
the Cosmos Club in Washington, the letter contained this passage: "As
only two or three other men in this country he [ Brandeis] has affected
the thought of the nation. He has profoundly affected our national
ideals. He has been a leader who has influenced other leaders, and his
power has thus penetrated far beyond the reach of his own personality.
Mr. Brandeis has been an inventor of ideas propelled by a great moral
force."

A career such as these lines suggest would, of course, be of great
interest to the historian and the biographer, and it would be attended
by the accumulation of a substantial written record. Brandeis gave the
papers touching his activities while at the Bar to the Library of the
Law School of the University of Louisville, an institution in his native
city whose development he had done much to foster. Among these
papers are also some items dating from the period of Brandeis' service
on the Bench, but having no close relation to his judicial work, as well
as a few notes bearing on judicial matters. The Louisville papers have
proved of great usefulness to scholars. Alpheus Thomas Mason drew
on them, of course, for his Brandeis -- A Free Man's Life. They are the
starting point for any understanding of Brandeis and of his achieve-
ment. But the systematic files concerning Supreme Court cases on

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