Brandeis (1916)

There seems to be a chance to put a modern man on the Bench of the Supreme Court. We have had some fine Judges there. We have had a few men like the late Justice Harlan who stood straight as an arrow for human rights; but there can be no doubt that the deeper causes of human right and justice as developed in the modern world have received from the Supreme Court of the United States scant consideration. It looked as though for a while it was going to be utterly impossible for any Supreme Court decision to take account of the rights of the Negro as men and as workingmen; even the “Grandfather” decision was but an inadequate sop.

With the nomination of Mr. Brandeis we have a man who, as a Jew, knows what it is to be “despised and rejected of men”; and especially as a friend and advocate of laboring men he knows what the curse of poverty means and what its abolition involves.

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Citation: Du Bois, W.E.B. 1916. “Brandeis.” The Crisis. 11(5):243.