Brandeis Used Political Skills To Further American Zionist Movement
November 18, 2011 2 Comments
Brandeis
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandies, the son of
Blackstone
Jewish immigrants, is known for his eloquent opinions in defense of free speech and privacy His social and judicial philosophy influenced Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. The two jurists often joined in dissents which challenged the majority view. They both relied on Holmes’ ”clear and present danger” concept to test restrictions on speech.
One such case was Whitney v. California [ 274 U.S. 327 (1927) ] in which Brandeis wrote that the “(F)ear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of free speech to free men from bondage of irrational fears. . . Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. . . “.
Constitutional scholar Anthony Lewis has noted that legal experts have lauded Brandeis’s opinion in Whitney to perhaps be the greatest defense of freedom of speech ever written by a member of the high court.
In 1891, William Eugene Blackstone, the Father of American Zionism had written a letter to President Benjamin Harrison urging him to call an international conference to consider the plight of the Jews and their beliefs that scripture required that they be returned to their ancient home in Palestine.
By the time the United States entered World War I as Britain’s ally in 1917, Louis Brandeis had become the leading American Zionist of his day. Not wanting to lose America’s support, he was asked to help win approval of any British endorsement of Zionism. In addition to being a close friend of President Woodrow Wilson, Brandeis had campaigned for him in 1912 and went on to serve as advisor during Wilson’s first term.
Brandeis not only had a keen insight into raw political power, but clearly understood the influence grass roots religion had on it. Relying on Wilson’s Christian faith, Brandeis was instrumental in winning Wilson’s”entire sympathy” for the proposal to create an Israel national state.
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The famous free speech standard proved easier to formulate than to apply, when less than a year after first articulating it in Schenck, Holmes dissented from a majority opinion that invoked the clear-and-present-danger test to justify upholding the convictions of five anti-war protestors who had distributed allegedly seditious pamphlets. Abrams v. United States , 250 U.S. 616, 1180, 40 S. Ct. 17, 63 L. Ed 1173 (1919).
Thanks for sharing your insights from this exciting period in our nation’s history. You write well and obviously are very knowledgable in this area of the law.