The first Jewish justice was also the first to face confirmation hearings

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Retropolis

The first Jewish justice was also the first to face confirmation hearings

By Ronald G. Shafer
Today at 7:00 a.m. EDT



An undated photo of Justice Louis D. Brandeis. (Harris & Ewing/Library of Congress)

Until 1916, Congress didn’t conduct public hearings on Supreme Court nominees. That changed when President Woodrow Wilson nominated Boston lawyer Louis D. Brandeis to be the high court’s first Jewish justice.

The Senate quickly convened the first confirmation hearings. Its stated reason was that the 59-year-old lawyer was a controversial liberal who might lack “judicial temperament.” But antisemitism was an uneasy undercurrent in the debate, and Brandeis himself suspected his religion was one of the main causes for skepticism of his appointment.

The Senate hearings were contentious, like the recent confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. But unlike Jackson, Brandeis didn’t have to face a barrage of questions, because he wasn’t present at the proceedings.

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By Ronald G. Shafer
Ronald G. Shafer is a former editor at the Wall Street Journal and the author of "The Carnival Campaign: How The Rollicking 1840 Campaign of Tippecanoe and Tyler Too Changed Presidential Elections Forever.” Twitter https://twitter.com/ronshafer1

[empedocles]

1. Great Justice

'We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.“. — Louis Brandeis. As quoted by Raymond Lonergan in Mr. Justice Brandeis, Great American (1941), p. 42.'

[EYESORE 9001]

2. Racists gotta drag their feet and try to derail progress

Call it serendipity, but I was thinking of Justice Brandeis a couple of days ago in the context of his championing free speech.

[Budi]

3. Antisemitism was established from those early days.