JUSTICE LOUIS BRANDEIS an american icon

One hundred and fifty years ago Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis was born in Louisville, Ky., the son of immigrants from Czechoslovakia.

He graduated from Harvard Law School with some of the highest grades ever received there.

He was named to the Supreme Court by President Woodrow Wilson as its first Jewish and most liberal member.

If he is remembered for nothing else, he will be remembered for discovering a constitutional right to privacy, which became the underpinning of the right to an abortion.

But there is more.Justice Brandeis upheld the right of an individual to "think as you will and to speak as you think," even against the government.

He enunciated a right to be left alone by the government as the right "most valued by civilized men."

He held that decency, security, and liberty require that "government officials be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen."
He asserted that the doctrine of separation of powers was adopted "not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power."

And, on an issue hotly debated during President Roosevelt's New Deal days, he held that there must be power in the states and in the nation to remold, through experimentation, our economic practices and institutions.