Just in time for the holidays, I've listed my Green Bag bobblehead doll of Justice Louis D. Brandeis on eBay. Buy it for that Supreme Court nerd or that leftist lawyer in your life! Better still, I'm donating all proceeds from the auction to the Pacific Legal Foundation to help combat the Brandeis legacy in the courts!
As I write in the item listing, Louis Brandeis wasn't just a pioneering lawyer and judge; he was also a radical enemy of private property rights and free markets. Prior to joining the Court he authored the famous "Brandeis Brief" in Muller v. Oregon, arguing that women are too delicate to know what's best for them and therefore the government should limit the kinds of economic choices they make. (The Green Bag folks have a nice picture of the Muller brief on the box.) And as David Bryden pointed out 25 years ago in Constitutional Commentary, the "facts" in Brandeis' Muller brief were dubious at best. What's more, in Leibmann, Brandeis argued in favor of a heinous state-created cartel in the ice business which violated basic constitutional principles of economic freedom and hurt working class entrepreneurs trying to make a living. And he argued that private property rights should be "remolded, from time to time, to meet the changing needs of society"--an idea that helped usher in the era of eminent domain abuse, which recently made headlines in the infamous Kelo decision. "Remolded," after all, is just a euphemism for violated.
Nevertheless, there are still many lawyers who admire Justice Brandeis, and heck--whose Supreme Court bobblehead collection could be complete without old Louis? So here's the deal. I will be donating all proceeds from this auction to the Pacific Legal Foundation, a non-profit public interest legal foundation devoted to defending property rights and economic freedom against the kinds of things that Brandeis favored! This holiday season you can get your loved one a rare Supreme Court collectible--and serve poetic justice at the same time!
(Here's Green Bag's annotation explaining the bobblehad's features.)
Comments policy