Frasi di Louis Brandeis

Louis Brandeis è stato un avvocato e giurista statunitense, membro della Corte Suprema degli Stati Uniti dal 1916 al 1939.

È ricordato per aver perseguito gratuitamente tematiche di grande rilevanza sociale, promuovendo l'avanzamento del diritto in vari campi e la tutela delle libertà civili. Sostenne fortemente il movimento sionista statunitense.

Brandeis influenzò decisivamente l'amministrazione di Woodrow Wilson, in modo tale da sostenere la Dichiarazione Balfour del 1917.



Wikipedia  

✵ 13. Novembre 1856 – 5. Ottobre 1941
Louis Brandeis photo
Louis Brandeis: 47   frasi 0   Mi piace

Louis Brandeis Frasi e Citazioni

Louis Brandeis: Frasi in inglese

“The court bows to the lessons of experience and the force of better reasoning, recognizing that the process of trial and error, so fruitful in the physical sciences, is appropriate also in the judicial function.”

Dissent, Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U.S. 393 (1932).
Judicial opinions
Contesto: Stare decisis is usually the wise policy, because in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right... This is commonly true even where the error is a matter of serious concern, provided correction can be had by legislation. But in cases involving the Federal Constitution, where correction through legislative action is practically impossible, this court has often overruled its earlier decisions. The court bows to the lessons of experience and the force of better reasoning, recognizing that the process of trial and error, so fruitful in the physical sciences, is appropriate also in the judicial function.

“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”

Other People's Money—and How Bankers Use It (1914).
Extra-judicial writings
Contesto: Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1928). The last sentence is one of many quotations inscribed on Cox Corridor II, a first floor House corridor, U.S. Capitol.
Judicial opinions
Contesto: The defendants' objections to the evidence obtained by wire-tapping must, in my opinion, be sustained. It is, of course, immaterial where the physical connection with the telephone wires leading into the defendants' premises was made. And it is also immaterial that the intrusion was in aid of law enforcement. Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

“Ownership has been separated from control; and this separation has removed many of the checks which formerly operated to curb the misuse of wealth and power.”

Dissent, Liggett Co. v. Lee, 288 U.S. 517 (1933), at 565-67.
Judicial opinions
Contesto: Through size, corporations, once merely an efficient tool employed by individuals in the conduct of private business have become an institution-an institution which has brought such concentration of economic power that so-called private corporations are sometimes able to dominate the state. The typical business corporation of the last century, owned by a small group of individuals, managed by their owners, and limited in size by their private wealth, is being supplanted by huge concerns in which the lives of tens or hundreds of thousands of employees and the property of tens of hundreds of thousands of investors are subjected, through the corporate mechanism, to the control of a few men. Ownership has been separated from control; and this separation has removed many of the checks which formerly operated to curb the misuse of wealth and power. And, as ownership of the shares is becoming continually more dispersed, the power which formerly accompanied ownership is becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few... [and] coincident with the growth of these giant corporations, there has occurred a marked concentration of individual wealth; and that the resulting disparity in incomes is a major cause of the existing depression.

“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.”

As quoted by Raymond Lonergan in Mr. Justice Brandeis, Great American (1941), p. 42.
Extra-judicial writings

“When a man feels that he cannot leave his work, it is a sure sign of an impending collapse.”

Letter to Alfred Brandeis (March 8, 1897), reprinted in Letters of Louis D. Brandeis Volume I 127 (Melvin I. Urovsky & David W. Levy, eds., State University of New York Press 1971).
Extra-judicial writings

“To Brandeis, as to Jefferson, the key to a successful democracy lies in the spirit, the vitality, the daring, the inventiveness of its citizens.”

Vincent Blasi, The First Amendment And The Ideal of Civic Courage: The Brandeis Opinion in Whitney v. California, 29 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 653, 686 (1988).

“In a time of moral and intellectual anarchy, he handed on the great tradition of faith in the mind and spirit of man.”

Dean Acheson, former clerk to Justice Brandeis, after Brandeis’s death in 1941.

“It is, as a rule, far more important how men pursue their occupation than what the occupation is which they select.”

The Opportunity in the Law, 39 American Law Review 555, 555 (1905).
Extra-judicial writings

“What I have desired to do is to make the people of Boston realize that the most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen. The duties of the office of private citizen cannot under a republican form of government be neglected without serious injury to the public.”

Statement to a reporter in the Boston Record, 14 April 1903. (quoted in Alpheus Thomas Mason, Brandeis: A Free Man's Life (1946), p. 122.)
Commonly paraphrased as "The most important office is that of the private citizen" or "The most important political office is that of the private citizen", and sometimes misattributed to his dissenting opinion in Olmstead v. United States.
Extra-judicial writings

“[N]o people ever did or ever can attain a worthy civilization by the satisfaction merely of material needs...”

"Hours of Labor" (1906), reprinted in Brandeis on Democracy 91 (Philippa Strum, ed., 1995).
Extra-judicial writings

“[T]hat which is man-made can be unmade.”

Letter to Frank Albert Fetter (November 26, 1940), reprinted in Letters of Louis D. Brandeis Volume V 648 (Melvin I. Urovsky & David W. Levy, eds.,State University of New York Press 1978).
Extra-judicial writings

“The bow must be strung and unstrung... there must be time also for the unconscious thinking which comes to the busy man in his play.”

Letter to William Harrison Dunbar (February 2, 1893), reprinted in Letters of Louis D. Brandeis Volume I (1870–1907): Urban Reformer 109 (Melvin I. Urovsky & David W. Levy, eds., State University of New York Press 1971).
Extra-judicial writings

“If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.”

Dissent, New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262 (1932).
Judicial opinions

“There is nothing cold or detached or aloof about the private Brandeis, but it is perfectly in keeping with his views of privacy that while he was alive he kept... his life and personality hidden from public view.”

Introduction to The Family Letters of Louis D. Brandeis at xxi (Melvin I. Urovsky & David W. Levy, eds., University of Oklahoma Press 2002).

Autori simili

Piero Calamandrei photo
Piero Calamandrei 90
politico italiano
Gianni Agnelli photo
Gianni Agnelli 72
imprenditore italiano
Al Pacino photo
Al Pacino 13
attore statunitense
Steven Weinberg photo
Steven Weinberg 6
fisico statunitense
Les Brown photo
Les Brown 1
politico statunitense
Allen Ginsberg photo
Allen Ginsberg 9
poeta statunitense
Robert Lee Frost photo
Robert Lee Frost 16
poeta statunitense
William Saroyan photo
William Saroyan 10
scrittore statunitense
Toni Morrison photo
Toni Morrison 27
scrittrice statunitense
Zig Ziglar photo
Zig Ziglar 4
scrittore statunitense