Louis Brandeis

Brandeis co-authored the landmark 1890 Harvard Law Review article "The Right to Privacy" with Samuel Warren, widely considered the foundational text of American privacy law. He also pioneered the "Brandeis Brief" in Muller v. Oregon (1908), which used extensive sociological and economic data rather than pure legal precedent—an approach that transformed appellate advocacy.

President Woodrow Wilson nominated Brandeis to the Supreme Court in 1916. His confirmation battle lasted over four months due to anti-Semitism and opposition from corporate interests who resented his progressive activism, but he was ultimately confirmed, becoming the first Jewish Justice in the Court's history.

In Olmstead v. United States (1928), Brandeis wrote a powerful dissent arguing that warrantless wiretapping violated the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches. His dissent was later vindicated in Katz v. United States (1967), which overturned Olmstead and adopted Brandeis's reasoning about privacy in modern contexts.

Brandeis believed that excessive concentration of corporate and government power threatened democracy itself, coining the phrase "the curse of bigness" in his writings. He argued that large-scale monopolies were inherently inefficient and socially harmful, a view he elaborated in his 1914 book "Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It."