Urofsky is at his best explaining Brandeis’s jurisprudence of free speech and of privacy. The author makes the convincing case that this justice, more than any other, laid the foundation for many of our current liberties. In a section with obvious implications for the post-9/11 nation, Urofsky demonstrates the practicality of Brandeis’s view that there are few circumstances when government has to limit freedom of speech and invade privacy. And when such actions become necessary, there is never an excuse for doing so outside the parameters of the law.
Setting a noble precedent
In storied career as lawyer and jurist, Brandeis managed to do well and good
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Urofsky spends considerable time dealing with Brandeis’s views on economic matters. Brandeis’s 1914 book, “Other People’s Money, and How the Bankers Use It,’’ which cautions against industrial conglomerates - namely, that their unchecked growth produces human misery and can lead to financial collapse - is unavoidably applicable today. While there may seem a touch of the quaint in the justice’s notions of small government and the need to limit federal power so as not to unduly restrict the “laboratories’’ of the states nor tread upon liberty, the federal government’s dysfunctionality and abuse of power makes Brandeis’s concerns as relevant today as they were in his time.
Urofsky has spent much of his professional life examining and writing about one or another aspect of this complex and multifaceted jurist. But this latest volume represents the pinnacle of Urofsky’s accumulated work. It will likely stand as the definitive Brandeis biography for many years.
Harvey A. Silverglate, a Boston-based criminal defense and civil liberties lawyer, is the author, most recently, of “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.’’
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